MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 






MUST 
WE FIGHT JAPAN? 



BY 

WALTER B. PITKIN 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1921 






Copyright, 1921, by 
The Centubt Co. 



FEB ?l n^i 
S)CLA605858 



FOREWORD 

The Japanese crisis in California is no local issue. 
It is one minor phase of a world problem that is already 
immense, intricate, and certain to grow steadily worse 
unless the most drastic steps are taken in the near future 
to solve it. 

The diplomatic complications it raises are mere sur- 
face ripples. Underneath them are stirring, fierce, hu- 
man forces — hunger, overcrowding, suspicions as old as 
Asia, racial habits of life, and the fierce pressure of un- 
heard-of new wealth seeking unheard-of profits on the 
last frontier of finance, which is China and Siberia. 

No ordinarj^ office-holder, no bureaucrat, no diplomat 
trained in the conventions of his craft, can alone cope 
with a problem which these factors dominate. The real 
Japanese crisis is properly a task to which the united 
intelligence of the best-informed people in America and 
Japan must devote itself for a long time to come. No 
new ''Gentlemen's Agreement" will settle anything. 
Neither will the new California land law nor the League 
of Nations nor the China Consortium. Still less will 
either the propaganda of the Japanese or of the Amer- 
ican exclusionists or of the "White Australians." 

And the reason for all this is quite plain. Beneath 
the diplomatic controversies, beneath the pulling and 
hauling of financial and commercial interests, the roots 
of the trouble lie in the elemental struggle for exist- 



vi FOREWORD 

ence, which, since the World War, has become every- 
where hideously evident to a degree which not even the 
most ardent Darwinian could hope for. The world is 
short of food and clothes. Too many babies are being 
bom in the wrong places, and too few in the right 
places. The rich lands of the earth have all been occu- 
pied, and the poorer acres are now being pressed into 
service. And to aggravate the whole situation, millions 
of men everywhere are honestly trying to solve their 
problems of living by the use of political notions and 
political machinery that are grotesquely inadequate or 
even false. 

So far as American opinion is concerned, it has been 
perverted and tainted by the ignorance of its chief in- 
formants, the newspapers, by the misrepresentations of 
men personally interested in some exploitation, and by 
the honest enthusiasms and exaggerations of patriots on 
both sides of the Pacific. And this poisoning has proved 
unusually dangerous because the American public, lack- 
ing first-hand information about Japan and having no 
direct interest in that country, has been unable to ap- 
praise the flood of fact and fiction about the crisis. 

The following study deals with the five major aspects 
of the situation. It surveys the events up to the clos- 
ing weeks of 1920 ; it analyzes the sources of misunder- 
standing between the Japanese and Americans; it in- 
quires into the genuine conflicts of interest and policy; 
it considers the various possibilities of future conflicts 
on a larger scale; and, finally, it presents suggestions 
for a fundamental solution based upon what seems to 
me to be a scientific national policy. At every point an 
effort has been made to avoid technicalities of law, diplo- 



FOREWORD vii 

macy, and scientific theory, in order to bring out in 
simple form the basic truths of the whole affair. This 
has compelled me to take an unduly brief and somewhat 
dogmatic stand with regard to a number of matters that 
are still decidedly controversial. In no case, however, 
has this course been pursued without a careful weighing 
of available evidence. 

Virtually all accessible sources of information and 
opinion have been inspected and in some measure util- 
ized. Particular attention has been given to the state- 
ments issued by pro-Japanese and anti-Japanese propa- 
gandists. Many American, British, Philippine, and 
Japanese officials have given me valuable facts difficult 
of access; and business men, banking experts, econo- 
mists, and export and import houses in New York and 
San Francisco have most courteously supplied me with 
significant data. More than two thousand newspaper 
reports have been clipped, and in some cases checked 
by a visit to the scene of the real or alleged news. Dur- 
ing the summer and autumn of 1920 I journeyed about 
three thousand miles in California and the adjoining dis- 
tricts of Mexico, interviewing employers of Japanese, a 
few Japanese farmers, many American ranchmen, real- 
estate operators, social workers, and various state and 
local officials whose work brought them into contact with 
some part of the Japanese problem. Of the several 
hundred Californians whom I had the good fortune to 
quiz, only one impressed me as seeing the issue in all 
its immense intricacy and at the same time having a 
statesmanlike solution ready. That man was Elwood 
Mead, chairman of the California Land Settlement 
Board, who has made his State famous by creating farms 



viii FOREWORD 

and farm villages at Durham and Delhi which promise 
to solve one of the hardest and most distressing prob- 
lems of American life ; namely, the upbuilding of healthy- 
rural communities and sound agriculture. Mr. Mead^s 
intimate knowledge of California farm life, and his wide 
experience in Australia and our own Pacific coast with 
the broader agrarian problems, enabled him to give me 
minute information that aided me greatly in finding facts 
and in interpreting them. 

Next to Mr. Mead, my most fruitful source of facts 
and opinion in California was the series of technical 
conferences held at the Scripps Institution of Biological 
Research at La Jolla during the first two weeks of Au- 
gust, 1920, when the San Diego Conference on the Prob- 
lems of the Pacific was being held near by. These meet- 
ings were planned, organized, and conducted by Dr. 
"William E. Ritter, director of the Scripps Institution, 
whose breadth of view is attested to by the variety of 
witnesses he saw fit to summon for discussion. Virtu- 
ally every scientific and practical aspect of the Japa- 
nese problem was represented at the conferences by one 
or more specialists or men of affairs. 

In the prolonged interchange of views by these many 
gentlemen, considerable information came out which has 
materially aided me. In the main this information was 
more or less scattered and incidental, though there were 
two outstanding exceptions to this rule ; namely, the sta- 
tistical material about tendencies in world population, 
which was brought forward by Warren S. Thompson of 
Cornell, and a comprehensive study of the world food 
suppty, present and future, presented by E. ]\I. East 
of the Bussey Institution of Harvard. Mr. Thompson's 



FOREWORD ix 

facts were in the main new to me and more than ordi- 
narily enlightening. So much so, indeed, that I have 
asked him to permit me to publish here most of his 
original presentation. Nearly all of the statistical ma- 
terial, as well as the inferences drawn therefrom, in the 
chapter entitled "Who Shall Inherit the Earth?" is Mr. 
Thompson's. Mr. East's general conclusions were all 
nearly identical with the substance of my own, inde- 
pendently reached through other channels ; but both his 
particular facts and his keen statistical analysis gave 
me new and much desired insight into one of the funda- 
mental phases of the Oriental problem. Finally, the 
constructive program of reciprocity advanced by Mr. 
E. T. W^illiams of the University of California, formerly 
of the Bureau of Oriental Affairs in the United States 
State Department and technical delegate on the same sub- 
ject at the Paris Peace Conference, impressed me as both 
just and ingenious. 

The final editorial revision and the handling of last- 
minute news could not have succeeded without the 
prompt and efficient assistance of Mrs. Emaine Sachs 
and Mr. ]\Iax Watson, both of whom have not only con- 
tributed material of value, but have rewritten entire 
chapters for me. Mr. Watson's first-hand knowledge of 
Japanese affairs in California, coupled with his close 
studies of rural problems on both the Atlantic and Pa- 
cific coasts, has proved particularly useful. 

I suspect that not a few readers will pick up this 
volume with a suspicious squint and say to themselves, 
"Well, I wonder who hired this press agent to tackle this 
subject?" This is the natural and correct attitude to 
take toward any book or article or even newspaper story 



X FOREWORD 

dealing with an important international problem in these 
days. The intelligent American has been stuffed with 
propaganda about Russia, propaganda about France, 
propaganda about Japan, propaganda about almost 
everj-thing except the multiplication table, until he has 
come to believe nobody and nothing. By way of star- 
tling him, then, and of protecting myself, let me state 
that I have not written this book on behalf of any gov- 
ernmental, political, commercial, financial, religious, or 
other organization; that I belong to no such organiza- 
tion; and that no such organization nor any person has 
ever suggested my writing on the subject. 

I became interested in the Japanese crisis late in 1919, 
when I read the current news items, articles, and books 
about Japan and California in a casual attempt to get 
my bearings. Being somewhat familiar with the ways 
and the agents of propaganda, I found in short order 
that nearly all of the information and opinion being 
doled out to the reading public came from people who 
had personal, political, commercial, or social connections 
with one or another of the many groups in the two 
countries whose interests were at stake. Knowing that 
the more intelligent classes of Americans were already 
nauseated with propaganda, it struck me that perhaps 
they would like to read a book on the subject written by 
somebody who had none of those particular prejudices 
and passions which invalidate the assertions of the pro- 
Japanese and the anti-Japanese. 

I should esteem it a favor if those persons who may 
criticize my findings, other than in technical details, 
would kindly make a similar statement as to their inter- 
ests and motives. It would be a waste of my time to 



FOREWORD xi 

carry on a debate with a propagandist whose connections 
were not made known, and it would be unfair to the read- 
ers of such a discussion. 

Walter B. Pitkin. 
New York, December 20, 1920. 



CONTENTS 



BOOK I THE CRISIS AND ITS COMPLICATIONS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1 Must We Fight Japan? 3 

2 As Japan Sees Us 8 

3 Forces That Make for Peace 23 

4 Forces That Make for War 34 

5 Illusions About Japan 46 



BOOK II THE SITUATION IN JAPAN 

6 Form of Government 55 

7 Control of Army and Public Opinion .... 62 

8 0\^rpopulation 72 

9 Wages and Exploitation 85 

10 Raw Materials, Russia, and "A Place in the Sun" 101 

11 Class Ethics and the Scientific Bureaucracy . Ill 

12 Japan's Military Impregnability 122 

13 Military Advantage op Low Standard op Living . 130 

14 What Would War Between Japan and the United 

States Involve? 137 

15 The Great Deadlock 154 

16 How Long Can the Deadlock Continue? . . . 167 

17 What Should We Do About It? 178 



BOOK III THE CRISIS IN HAWAII AND 
CALIFORNIA 

18 Japanese in Hawaii 185 

19 Japanese in California 198 

20 The Psychology op the Crisis 235 



CONTENTS 



BOOK IV HOW TO DEAL WITH THE CRISIS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

21 Our National Policy. On What Must It Be 

Built? 269 

22 The World's Food To-day and To-morrow . . . 289 

23 Who Shall Inherit the Earth? 312 

24 "The Crisis of the Ages" 341 

25 A Proposed International Policy 361 

26 The Greater Crisis Beneath the Japanese Issue 392 



BOOK V EXPERT OPINIONS ON SOME PROBLEMS 
OF POLICY 

27 Conflicting National Policies of Japan and 

United States (By E. T. Williams) . . . .423 

28 Cheap Labor and Standards of Living (By Warren 

S. Thompson) 463 

29 New Agrarian Policies in Australia and Cali- 

fornia (By Elwood Mead) 474 

30 Shall East Wed West? Racial Intermarriage 

(By S. J. Holmes) 481 

Appendix 511 

Index 529 



BOOK I 
THE CRISIS AND ITS COMPLICATIONS 



MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

CHAPTER 1 
MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

MUST we fight Japan? 
Many Americans will laugh at this question. 
The world has had enough of war, they say. After hav- 
ing watched Europe go down into ruin, most of us are 
now vividly aware of the folly of trying to settle any 
national quarrels by the caveman method, so they tell 
us. Furthermore, Japan and the United States are too 
far apart ever to be drawn into battle. 

But there are other Americans, and not a few of them, 
who insist that our query is ridiculous for the opposite 
reason. There is only one real problem, they tell us, 
and that is: How soon shall we be fighting Japan, and 
how shall we manage it so as to win? These people, 
mostly living on our Pacific Coast, argue that war has 
already become inevitable. And they are not at a loss 
when asked to advance their reasons for their belief. 
They point to half a hundred momentous political and 
commercial events, here and abroad, concerning all of 
which we shall have much to say later ; and, on the whole, 
their evidence is much more circumstantial and smacks 

3 



4 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

less of theories and wishes than does the evidence of those 
who take the view that war is impossible. 

The very existence of two such sharply opposed views 
suggests that both are wrong and that our question is 
an open one. And a careful examination of the facts 
fully confirms this supposition. War with Japan is a 
possibility, not a certainty to-day. Peace with Japan 
is a possibility, not a certainty to-day. It is a demonstra- 
ble fact that 

There are many more powerful forces making for war 
between Japan and the United States to-daif than there 
were for making war between Germany and the United 
States only ten years ago. 

And it is no less demonstrable that 

There are some powerful forces working to prevent 
such a war which were not working to prevent the war 
between Germany and the United States. 

The chances of grave trouble with Japan in the near 
future are immensely greater than our chances of 
trouble with Germany were ten years ago. This is a 
most conservative statement that could, if we had 
time for such a task, be proved in detail. Whoever 
doubts it is asked to contemplate the following facts : 

In 1910, Germany was expanding into southeastern 
Europe politically and economically, and this expansion 
was not coming into conflict with a single visible interest 
of the United States. 

In 1920, Japan is expanding in eastern Asia, Hawaii, 
and our own Pacific Coast. Her interests in Siberia 
conflict sharply with American international policies. 



MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 5 

Her demand for control of the German cable station on 
the island of Yap and the granting of her wish by the 
League of Nations have disturbed our State Department 
so deeply that the delicate controversy has been laid be- 
fore the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate ; and 
it is not unlikely that grave complications may ensue. 
Her aggression in China conflicts with American ship- 
ping, commercial, and diplomatic interests, with Ameri- 
can moral sentiment, and with the American policy of 
"The Open Door." The enormous influx of Japanese 
into Hawaii has already made those islands oriental in 
every sense save the political one, and within another dec- 
ade they will be politically dominated by the Japanese 
vote. The lesser immigration into California has brought 
about a grave crisis, the latest development of which is 
the overwhelming referendum vote of that State in favor 
of a land law that must result, if consistently carried out, 
in driving thousands of Japanese farmers out of the Pa- 
cific Coast region. For rather obvious reasons this same 
discriminatory legislation has produced immense irrita- 
tion in Japan. 

In 1910, thousands of Americans admired all things 
German, save the kaiser, whom few took half seriously 
enough. The meaning of what had happened in Bosnia 
in 1908 had not dawned upon us and did not influence 
our national policies visibly. Our newspapers were full 
of stories about German skill in industry and social work. 
We were still welcoming German dignitaries to our 
shores. There were even intelligent men who pointed to 
the state socialism of Germany with admiration and envy. 

In 1920, all Americans who have given the matter much 
thought, look with forebodings upon the Government and 



6 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the ruling classes of Japan. The World War has opened 
our e3^es to the evils of feudalism, no matter how good the 
motives of its managers may be. The conviction is deep- 
ening that the world cannot exist half feudal and half 
free. Wherever this thought sinks in, there it creates 
profound distrust of the Japanese Government and all 
its policies. Americans do not like to associate with Jap- 
anese in the same community; and they are coming to 
fear the militaristic aristocracy of that race, even though 
it be on the other side of the earth. 

In 1910, the Government and the people of Germany 
cherished no special grudge against America. While 
they despised us as a nation of hucksters and mollycod- 
dles, it was a faint prejudice that seldom developed power 
enough to influence their acts. And there were thou- 
sands of Germans having business and personal connec- 
tions in the United States who emphatically liked us and 
our ways. 

In 1920, the Government and the people of Japan dis- 
like us. And not all the smooth evasions of professional 
diplomats can conceal this feeling. Too few Americana 
appreciate its power and extent. It has four sources: 

1. The impression about Americans and their morals 
which is systematically created by newspapers and mo- 
tion pictures ; 

2. The part America has played, together with the 
powers of Europe, in forcing itself, its business men, and 
its trade upon Japan. 

3. The cunning and hypocritical efforts of our Govern- 
ment in thwarting Japan in her natural expansion on 
the mainland of Asia, whither her immense surplus popu- 
lation must overflow or perish. 



MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 7 

4. The insulting attitude of Americans on the Pacific 
coast in treating Japanese as an inferior race and passing 
harsh laws that discriminate against them. 

We cannot see the Japanese crisis in its true perspec- 
tive until we have inspected the belief and prejudices 
that have been steadily flowing from these four sources. 



CHAPTER 2 
AS JAPAN SEES US 

EVERY American, before he can appraise the present 
crisis, must put himself in the place of a Japanese 
and see the situation through his eyes as far as possible. 

Let us inquire first of all as to the sources of the ordi- 
nary Japanese citizen's information and impressions 
about us. You will doubtless think at once of the news 
despatches published in the Yokohama and Tokio dailies, 
the other news in the English-language sheets of Japan, 
and the letters from Japanese colonist in Hawaii and the 
Pacific coast. All these are important factors in deter- 
mining Japanese opinion. But, in truth, to-day they are 
little more than confirmatory of hypotheses which the 
Japanese derive from another source so much more 
widely known in the islands, so vivid, and so copious, 
that every other channel of knowledge has become petty 
in comparison. This source is the American motion- 
picture. 

The motion-picture has, from all that I can gather 
from both natives and Americans who have been study- 
ing it in Japan, China, and India, done more to blacken 
the reputation of the white race in general and the United 
States in particular than all the malice and libel of the 
most savage anti-American propagandists. The *' rising 
tide of color," which Lothrop Stoddard has recently de- 

8 



AS JAPAN SEES US 9 

scribed so picturesquely, but inaccurately, does not flow 
from native irritation over politics or secret diplomacy 
or the aggressions of economic imperialism in any greater 
volume than it flows from the inevitable reactions which 
the ordinary run of screen-picture produces upon the or- 
dinary Asiatic, as he sits in the shabby theaters of the 
great ports and contemplates the world of the white man 
as reported to him by the white man himself. 

The pictures he sees are, as a rule, not those recently 
produced by our best companies. The films that are ex- 
ported to Asia and South America are largely of two 
classes. Ma,ny of them are inferior works of art which 
have not succeeded in our o^vn country, and have there- 
fore been dumped on the helpless heathen, who can pay 
only the lowest rentals and hence ought not to expect 
much. These are, on the whole, merely the cheap, silly 
stuff that you may see any evening when you can endure 
sitting for an hour in almost any fifteen or twenty cent 
movie-dive. The Japanese sees exactly what you see — 
murders, robberies, prostitutes exhibiting themselves as 
heroines, and supposedly sane characters saying and do- 
ing things which only morons or drug fiends could say 
or do. As all of the pictures of this class are exactly 
alike in their essential plots, stage settings, characters, 
and general imbecilities, and as the Japanese observer 
sees them month in and month out, he is forced into the 
habit of believing that all this is American realism. In 
this he does exactly what you do when you see a motion- 
picture with scenes laid in India or Japan. 

The second class of pictures he sees is quite different. 
You have never seen them, and probably you never will 
unless you happen to sit on a board of censors. They 



10 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

are the films which the censors bar from the American 
screen. Most of them are old, for not many producers 
are to-day attempting such filth. They have learned 
that it pays to show a chemical trace of decency even in 
the movies. But they cannot refrain from cashing in on 
past mistakes. So they keep on circuit in Asia and 
South America (and, so I am told, Mexico) the hundreds 
of thousands of feet of tainted celluloid that five, ten, or 
even more years ago was adjudged too nasty for even a 
Barbary Coast audience in San Francisco. The mildest 
description of these films is unfit to print. Yet mission- 
aries and business men both testify that they are being 
shown regularly in all the larger cities of Asia, and a 
high official of the Government of India personally told 
me that the effect of these loathsome displays on the 
natives of that country was so evil that plans for a severe 
censorship were being considered, especially against what 
Asia knows as the American film. 

Now, here is no place to discuss what America ought 
to do by way of protecting our already tarnished name 
against the degenerates who write, act, and finance such 
pictures. Enough to know that for every one Asiatic 
who learns something about the United States from news- 
papers or letters a thousand learn everything about us 
from these movies. It matters little that there is a 
sprinkling of decent and even solidly informative pic- 
tures in the stream of exhibits. The significant fact is 
that the "run of the mill" is as above described, and it 
is just this that shapes men 's ideas. 

An American, beholding the lurid lunacy of a cheap 
movie, is seldom disturbed by it. He knows that there 
aren 't any such animals as the screen depicts in the guise 



AS JAPAN SEES US 11 

of Yankee heroes and villains. He simply doesn't meet 
them on the street. But the Japanes is less fortunate. 
He hasn't been around America, and he has no friends 
here. The only way he can check up on the motion- 
picture is by reading about America. The two most ac- 
cessible sources of printed information are the Japanese 
newspapers and the few English-language publications 
in Japan. The well-to-do and highly educated Japanese 
is likel}^ to read more or less regularly some American 
newspaper also. 

Now, it is a well-known fact among newspaper men 
that only the most sensational news is cabled from any 
one country to any other. This is an evil state of affairs, 
and one of the most potent causes of international mis- 
understandings. Some day it will be remedied, but now 
it is still unaltered so far as America and Asia are con- 
cerned. And the result is that the run of news from 
America about America confirms the motion-picture im- 
pressions of America upon the Japanese mind. And so 
too, in great measure, do the head-lines of even our own 
more respectable newspapers. Let us glance briefly at 
these last. Let us see just what the Japanese are hear- 
ing about us now through our own best periodicals. Let 
us observe, in the middle of December, 1920, "all the 
news that 's fit to print." 

The New York building investigation is featured on 
the front page, abounding in murky revelations of graft 
— money taken from contractors by labor bosses, who in 
turn squeeze a toll from the workmen. Organized es- 
pionage carried on by the steel interest is mentioned, 
with the suggestion of spies and counterspies. At the 
very trial itself, men are removed from the court-room, 



12 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

accused of coaching witnesses. All this leaves a general 
impression of moral depravity. 

A police lieutenant, also on the same day, was shot by 
burglars when he attempted to interfere with their plans. 
In the ball-room of the Hotel Astor on this same day a 
dinner of the Japan Society was taking place, with its 
protestations of friendship between two friendly nations. 
At that very hour a daring robbery was taking place 
only several floors above the festivities. Three bandits, 
with disconcerting boldness, walked into one of the rooms 
and attempted a hold-up. Two of the men escaped. 

Further reading in our press does not tend to prove 
our right to send missionaries into the East to bring 
civilization to barbarism. Detroit has a toll of twenty- 
four murders in one year. Gunmen in speeding auto- 
mobiles slay and steal there, for vengeance and profit, 
and go unpunished. Chicago confesses to sixty-eight un- 
solved homicides in this same year. A normal day in 
that progressive city has to its credit thirty-two rob- 
beries and burglaries by violence. Philadelphia, the 
City of Brotherly Love, has to its credit one hundred 
murders in eleven months. Fifty holdups occurred in 
one day. Cleveland has seventy murders on its records 
in one year. 

In the New York papers for December 17, 1920, we 
find accounts of a bandit killing a jeweler on Fifth Ave- 
nue. The robber easily escaped with the jewels, and this 
happened at twenty minutes after two in the afternoon. 
All of which prompts an editor to remark soberly : 

"Readers of yesterday's 'Times' had the happiness of know- 
ing that Tuesday was a perfectly normal day, with the nor- 
mal amount of energy on the part of the violent annexers of 



AS JAPAN SEES US IS 

other people's property. Only five daylight robberies were 
reported. The returns were only normally satisfactory, some- 
thing more than $50,000. The normal citizen must have felt 
satisfied that the average of crime was not rising." 

But the worst is still to come. Our Japanese observer, 
if extremely charitable, might explain and excuse this 
national viciousness in a number of way^. But he would 
probably stop his apology when he discovered that we 
not only fail to suppress crimes, but, when crimes are 
committed, almost never run down the criminals and 
bring them to justice. The official figures on crimes, ar- 
rests, and convictions have been minutely studied by 
many experts, and they all demonstrate that in the 
United States murder has always been one of the safest 
of professions. A murderer runs much less risk of land- 
ing in the electric chair than a glass-blower runs of land- 
ing in a sanatorium or a leather-worker of dying of an- 
thrax. Pleasured alongside the police systems of Europe 
and Japan, ours is a ghasth^ jest. We simply do not 
know what scientific and efficient policing is. In this 
we stand imperceptibly above the Balkan States, as Ray- 
mond Fosdick's recent studies show. 

Our burglars loot eight times as many homes and shops 
as backward Great Britain's burglars do. Our murder- 
ers slay twice as many victims as Great Britain's manage 
to slay. Our robbers and highwa^Tnen are from three to 
five times as skilful and as busy. Our insurance sta- 
tisticians, analyzing the cold facts revealed on our po- 
lice blotters, declare, as the "Spectator" has of late: 
*' Human life was never so insecure in the United 
States as it is today, and our national apathy toward 
this insecurity is an indictment of our alleged civiliza- 



14 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tion." To which we may add the all too true words of 
the Chicago ' ' Tribune, ' ' which remarks, ' ' There is prob- 
ably more undisciplined, egotistic, mischievous force in 
the United States to-day than in any other country of 
first rank in the world. ' ' 

Our general disregard for the law is nowhere shown 
more clearly than in the attitude of our foremost citizens 
toward prohibition. It must impress a foreigner that 
our main topic of conversation turns on ways to procure 
or manufacture liquor illegally. The boast of a New 
York clubman that he knows fifty places in New York 
where he can get anything from a cocktail to a gin-fizz 
is only too often heard. The most charming of well- 
dressed society women will give an excellent recipe 
for apple-jack, that most potent of intoxicants, for the 
asking. Unscrupulous dealers have taken dire advantage 
of this eagerness for forbidden fruits, and again the pa- 
pers come in beating the drums of tragedy: two men 
killed from drinking wood alcohol illegally sold in a 
New York hotel, a woman dying from drinking wood al- 
cohol. The death-toll lengthens to weariness. 

A paper with a weakness for statistics announces an 
average of seven decrees of divorce daily in Seattle. We 
read of suits for alienation of affections. A common-law 

wife sues the second Mrs. S. for a considerable sum 

of money, showing her willingness to parade her moral 
status in return for gain. We notice that a woman has 
been indicted by a grand jury for procuring and sell- 
ing two girls for immoral purposes, and the testimony 
reveals a shocking recital of the traffic in women. A man 
of sixty, respected in his community, married for many 



AS JAPAN SEES US 15 

years, advertises for a typist; but the advertisement 
proves to be a trap. 

Every day adds to the long roll of deaths from motor 
accidents, most of them due to carelessness and indiffer- 
ence to human life. In one day five such tragedies oc- 
curred. An aged couple was run down by a limousine, 
but the automobile continued on its way. The driver did 
not even look back to see how badly his victims were in- 
jured. The old couple died, but the driver has not been 
apprehended. 

In this year of business uncertainties the charities are 
the first expenditures to be curtailed. Our love for our 
fellow-man is amply measured by the failure of hospital 
drives for funds, and collections for Christmas distribu- 
tions to the suffering poor are pitifully meager. All 
this is reported in the press, and one paper comments on 
this selfishness, in the light of the receipts of $137,000 
taken from the public in one evening for admission to a 
prize-fight in New York City. Those who could not get 
into the building because of lack of space hung about the 
Dutside, breathless, waiting. An outsider, seeing that 
eager, excited crowd, could not fail but comment on our 
adoration of the thug. 

Our high standards of patriotism are unfortunately 
3omputed in terms to coincide with the public revelations 
Df graft in the shipping board, in the air-craft commis- 
jion, and in government sales, all of which show a desire 
:o cheat and steal and profiteer for individual gain and 
patronage. 

Our professions of liberalism are not strengthened by 
:he publication of such papers as ' ' The Menace, ' ' which 



16 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

is devoted to the declaration that all Catholics are foul 
conspirators against civilization. Nor are those profes- 
sions strengthened by Henry Ford's widely read weekly, 
which revels in anti-Semitic propaganda. 

As for the honesty of our internationalists and labor 
leaders who profess to be yearning for the "brotherhood 
of man," an able and frank Japanese has told us how 
their behavior impresses his countrymen. Mr. K. K. 
Kawakami, in his recent volume on "Japan and World 
Peace," remarks: 

"Even Westerners and Western organizations professing to 
advocate internationalism have been incapable of redeeming 
themselves from the traditional attitude of anti-liberalism to- 
wards the East. This is best illustrated by the attitude of 
Socialists and labor unionists in Europe and America. The 
Allied Labor Conference held at Leeds in July, 1916, adopted 
a program guaranteeing to the working people of all coun- 
tries ^freedom to work in any countiy where employment is 
available under equal conditions with its citizens.' To the 
International Labor Conference now being held in Paris, 
American labor has submitted a program containing the pro- 
vision that ^no political or economic restrictions meant to 
benefit some nations and to cripple or embarrass others' shall 
be adopted by any country. 

"Did the labor leaders of Europe and America, in adopting 
such provisions, have in mind the working classes in the Ori- 
ent, as well as their fellows in the Occident? If they did, 
their acts certainly have not conformed with their principles. 
When Socialists in Europe and America, forgetting that across 
the oceans teeming millions are crying for larger fields of ac- 
tivity, pledge themselves to internationalism, they are think- 
ing only of Europe and America. When the trade unionists 
of Europe and America speak of the brotherhood of workers, 



AS JAPAN SEES US 17 

they are thinking only of their own race. They complain that 
Japanese working men work for low wages, ignoring that, if 
the teeming masses of England and America were bottled up 
in a small archipelago as are the Japanese, their wage scale 
would not have risen as rapidly as it has. The pacifists of 
Europe and America advocate world peace by sustaining the 
status quo of the relations of the East and West — by peimit- 
ting the West not only to continue its occupation, in all parts 
of the world, of more territory than it is justly entitled to 
possess, but also to exclude from such territories all dark- 
skinned races whose overcrowded home lands afford not only 
scant opportunity to their natives, but are themselves often 
subject to ruthless exploitation at the hands of the West. A 
Western nation may declare a Monroe Doctrine, but is reluct- 
ant to accord an Asiatic nation a similar privilege. The West 
expects the East to open its doors to the enterprises and even 
exploitation of the white race, but reserves the right to slam 
its own doors in the face of the East." 

It must be all but impossible for an intelligent Japa- 
nese to refrain from believing that our Federal Govern- 
ment is as bad as our city governments. He must con- 
elude from the day's news that the most vicious, an- 
tiquated economic imperialism of the Mark Hanna-Mc- 
Kinley brand is now dominating American policy. He 
reads that the current estimates for the United States 
Army and Navy reach the revolting figure of $1,500,000,- 
300. He hears Mr. Harding tell newspaper reporters 
that it is a Government's highest duty to aid business 
md that he stands for a big navy. He observes that our 
War Department has lately increased its permanent gar- 
rison in Hawaii to twenty thousand regulars, and that 
)ur Navy Department now openly readjusts its distri- 
Dution of ships and supply bases so that the Pacific be- 



18 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

comes of equal strategic importance with the Atlantic. 
And he smiles a knowing smile as he contemplates the 
suave indifference, not to say deafness, of most prominent 
Republicans toward the demands of the Philippine Na- 
tionalists that the United States fulfil its solemn promise 
to give their islands independence. 

Take the Japanese point of view as far as you can. 
Then you will have to agree with Viscount Ishii, when he 
notified Commission No. 6, on International Disarma- 
ment, of the League of Nations that Japan cannot con- 
sider reducing her military forces so long as the United 
States persists in her present policy. No sane Japanese 
could take any other position, particularly in view of the 
extent to which anti-Japanese agitation has spread in the 
United States. And we can scarcely censure him for 
construing our past relations with Japan as one of his 
noted editors does in the following staggering indictment, 
that appeared on November 12, 1919, in the Osaka 
*'Mainichi," which is one of Japan's most influential 
newspapers : 

"History shows, however, that America's attitude toward 
Japan has been aggressive, insulting and coercive throughout. 

"(1) When Commodore Perry visited Japan, we benevolently 
interpreted his visit as an attempt to open our door to the 
world. But the fact that there were no serious developments 
between the two countries was due to the change in adminis- 
tration, the policy of the new President being different from 
that of his predecessor. The total intention of Perry's fleet 
was to threaten us and to take the Okinawa Islands by force 
in order to coerce this country if we did not obey his orders. 

"(2) America assisted the independence plot in Hawaii, and 
used it to realize the annexation of the islands by America. 
It may be said that this action on the part of America em- 



AS JAPAN SEES US 19 

bodied the spirit in which America threatened to take the 
Okinawa Islands. 

"(3) In obtaining Guam and the Philippines in the American- 
Spanish War, America secured another stepping-stone for de- 
velopment in the Pacific and also laid the foundation of her 
activities in China. On the other hand, this state of affairs 
was calculated to obstruct the southern affairs of Japan and 
to impair her relations with China. In other words to hinder 
Japan's activities on the east, west, and south. At that time, 
Japanese-American relations were not so strained as yet. 
Moreover, the Gentlemen's Agreement and the Pacific Agree- 
ment have served to some extent as palliatives. 

"(4) Since the school children's question arose in California, 
however, America has openly projected anti-Japanese plans. 

"(5) When subsequently the California Legislature proposed 
to undermine the foundations of Japanese development in 
California by enacting a new land law, the Japanese could but 
rise in indignation, and at that time Japanese-American di- 
plomacy assumed a profound significance. The spirit of 
friendship toward America, however, kept the Japanese from 
making up their minds to take drastic action. While the issue 
was left undecided, California actually attained her object, 
though the question was nominally left pending. The Amer- 
icans are elated, but every Japanese is indignant at a procedure 
which ignored the constitutions of California and of the 
United States, set at naught treaty obligations and trampled 
under foot the laws of humanity. 

"America took further steps to oppress Japan. America has 
tried (6) to alienate China from Japan in connection with the 
question of China's participation in the European War; (7) 
to oust Japan from investments in China, and to obtain cap- 
italistic control of China; (8) to hai^ass Japan at the Peace 
Conference, to prevent Japan from possessing the former Ger- 
man Islands in the South Pacific by proposing mandatory 
rules, and to violate the Sino-Japanese Agreement and Japan's 



20 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

understanding with Great Britain and France regarding the 
disposal of Shantung; (9) to restrain Japan's movements with 
regard to the dispatch of troops to Siberia or to estrange the 
relations between Japan and Russia; (10) to threaten Japan 
by greatly increasing the strength of the Pacific squadron; 
(11) to assist the independence agitation in Korea and (12) 
the anti- Japanese boj^cott in China. (13) America has abused 
and insulted Japan in the course of debate on the Peace Treaty 
with Germany. (14) With regard to the International Labor 
Conference, Mr. Sherman made remarks exceedingly insulting 
to Japan. It seems as if America desires to arouse Japan^s 
indignation in order to make war. (15) In the meantime, 
a new immigration bill has often been proposed in the Fed- 
eral Legislature for anti- Japanese purposes, while (16) the 
anti-Japanese Califomians are striving fundamentally to ex- 
clude Japanese. 

"The anti- Japanese campaign of America is not confined to 
California or to the Republicans or Progressives alone; it 
seems that the movement is supported throughout the countiy 
and even by the Democrats. It is no wonder that some Sen- 
ator who opposed the Shantung amendment said, in explaining 
his reason for the opposition, that Japan's development in 
Shantung was preferable to that in America." 

In the early autumn of 1920, as the time approached 
for California to vote on the law prohibiting Japanese 
land leasing, the Japanese cabinet resolved to push diplo- 
matic negotiations against such an enactment. It was 
reported in Tokio that the Government intended to force 
the issue of race equality upon the League of Nations 
conference. In the last week of September, Marquis 
Okuma, the former premier, called a meeting of one hun- 
dred prominent diplomats, business men, and publicists, 
for the purpose of organizing a publicity campaign in 



AS JAPAN SEES US 21 

Japan ''against the unlawful attitude of California 
Americans." To the Associated Press correspondent 
Okuma stated that the approaching world Sunday School 
convention at Tokio afforded a fine opportunity for a 
demonstration, inasmuch as it would be attended by many 
Americans who advocated justice and humanity in the 
settling of all affairs. At about the same time Repre- 
sentative Kodama forecast war between his nation and 
the United States in a meeting that the police broke up. 
And the former foreign minister, Viscount Takahira 
Kato, declared: 

"That America, which constantly is advocating the cause of 
righteousness and humanity, should dare, without giving 
proper reasons, to deprive Japanese of the fruits of many 
painstaking labors is an act which we can never overlook. 
That America, of all countries, should resort to an act so 
cruel and inhuman is really inexplicable." 

When intelligent and sober diplomats speak thus, it is 
not surprising that sensational newspapers, such as the 
' ' Yorodzu, ' ' burst forth with such fury as this : 

"Whatever may be their object, their actions are more de- 
spicable than those of the Germans whose atrocities they at- 
tacked as worthy of the Huns. At least, these Americans are 
barbarians who are on a lower plane of civilization than the 
Japanese." 

Since California passed the drastic land measure in 
referendum last November, by a vote of more than three 
to one, the outbursts in Japan have naturally increased 
in number, though it must be said that the Government 
has shown much skill and tact in controlling the more vio- 
lent protestants. Buddhist mobs have attacked Japanese 



22 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Christians here and there. Students have openly de- 
bated the question: "Shall We Declare War on The 
United States?" And the Government filed diplomatic 
protests with our State Department, which, at the date of 
this writing, claims to be engaged in drawing up a new 
''Gentlemen's Agreement" to placate Tokio — a venture 
which, as will later appear, is doomed to abject failure 
or else to catastrophe in view of California's absolute re- 
fusal to consider granting full civic rights to Japanese 
already within our country. 

Does not all this prove that the sources of trouble be- 
tween Japan and ourselves to-day are vastly graver than 
any which existed between Germany and America ten 
years ago? 



CHAPTER 3 
FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 

AGAINST such disturbing influences, there are a few 
which happily make for peace. Unhappily, how- 
ever, it is human nature to exaggerate their power, and 
it is very difficult to prove that they are at all effective in 
political practice. We may name four of these forces, by 
way of illustration. Certainly the most conspicuous one, 
so far as the United States is concerned, is the wide- 
spread disgust and disillusionment as to the value of war 
as a method of getting results. Almost every American 
to-day realizes, sometimes bitterly, that the cost of the 
World War was out of all proportion to any possible or 
actual benefits accruing from the conflict. Two years 
ago this statement would have been treason ; to-day it is 
an axiom. A second influence is the rapidly growing sol- 
idarity of the intellectual classes of the world and their 
concerted efforts to anticipate international crises and 
block them by honest and open debate and publicity. In 
this movement the intellectuals of Japan are playing a 
worthy part, at times under handicaps little realized by 
us. A third influence is the shaky financial condition of 
the whole world, and of Japan in particular, which op- 
erates to array all international bankers solidly against 
every political movement that threatens, even remotely, 
to carry any country into war. A fourth influence is 
the economic dependence of Japan's new industrial sys- 

23 



24 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tern upon the United States for most of its raw materials 
and special machinery. 

The scope and the power of these four influences are 
changing rapidly, so that it is peculiarly difficult to make 
dogmatic assertions about them. But at the present time 
it seems safe to declare that the reaction against war 
throughout the rank and file of Americans is so tremen- 
dous that nothing short of a plainly vicious assault upon 
our own land would provoke us to give battle. How long 
this sentiment will continue without abatement cannot 
be predicted, but at the most conservative estimate we 
may hazard that for at least the next ten years the United 
States will not be dragged into anything save the most 
obvious defensive war, unless the public is tricked by poli- 
ticians or propaganda. How great the peril of such 
trickery may be, nobody knows. But we do know that 
whole nations can be all too easily hoodwinked and misled 
in the waj^ of war. How imminent an attack upon us is 
can be estimated much more readily; for the next few 
years, say ten at the very least, not a nation or a conceiv- 
able coalition of nations is going to contemplate landing 
forces on our shores or even appropriating our remoter 
territory. Our military and economic power is too over- 
whelming. 

As for the good that the intellectual classes of the 
world can do in forestalling war, the best of estimates 
here must be a wild guess in which wish and fact prob- 
ably mingle indistinguishably. True, the activities of 
the great peace organizations, which were interrupted by 
the World War, are now resuming vigorously. The 
labor unions of our own country are being followed, to 
some slight degree, by the Japanese workers in their or- 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 25 

ganized efforts for peace. And shortly after California 
passed her latest anti-Japanese land law, the leaders of 
various religious societies joined with prominent political 
workers in Japan for the purpose of reaching an ami- 
cable understanding with our own country. So there are 
hopes of better times. Nevertheless we must bear in 
mind that the intellectual classes of Japan are still labor- 
ing under peculiar restraints from their own Government, 
very much as the professors and scientists of old Prussia 
were. And we must not forget that, in the shaping of 
national policies, both Japan and the United States are 
still altogether too much at the mercy of schemers and 
underground workers and gentlemen adventurers. And 
it is tlie economic pressure in the present situation which, 
as we shall show later, will count most in shaping the 
course of events. 

The parlous state of world finances is, at present, a 
tremendous insurance against war. Europe, as every- 
body knows but few like to say, is insolvent from Bor- 
deaux to the Urals. The prospect that the United States 
will ever collect more than ten cents on the dollar of 
all the billions we have advanced to the one-time Allies 
is as faint as the odor of sanctity. We may count our- 
selves lucky if we cash in on the municipal, commercial 
and other private loans, which now total more than three 
billions. It is no cheap jest to say that Europe, so far 
as she is living at all, is now existing on the interest of 
her debts. 

How this is undermining the whole structure of life 
and business is only too familiar. In the closing days of 
1920 a conservative correspondent describes the crisis in 
these gray phrases : 



26 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

^'Prom every part of Europe, from old countries and new, 
and even from Asia, reports arrive of unrest and disturbance, 
of commercial crisis, unemployment and inability to sell prod- 
ucts, together with the greatest need of those products. 

*'Food supplies are far smaller than before the war — indeed 
far too small for the world's needs, even though the United 
States may lack for nothing and though large stocks are ac- 
cumulating in many countries for want of buyers. Thus large 
manufacturers and wholesale merchants who have immense 
supplies produced or bought at a time when very high prices 
still prevailed, are being obliged to liquidate at very heavy 
loss. 

"Already failures for considerable sums are occurring, and 
economists and financiers acquainted with the state of Europe 
seem to have made up their minds to face a commercial 
crash, complicated in certain countries with revolution. The 
question now pre-occupying them is how to minimize the 
gravity of this crash. No one denies that a crash is inevit- 
able : the only question is how to lessen its seriousness." 

The whole world is groaning under a burden of taxes 
and business losses from which no man sees an early 
escape. When they are graybeards, babes now in arms 
will certainly be paying heavily for the madness of 1914. 
In the United States people react with particular ill 
feeling to such penalties, largely because most Ameri- 
cans, despite all attempts at popular education in inter- 
national affairs, still do not appreciate the benefits of the 
money spent in defeating Germany. The European 
understands what he got for his monej^ and can there- 
fore endure the bills with better grace than our own 
people. The most unpopular proposal that the mind of 
man could invent and present to Americans to-day would 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 27 

be one calling for an increase of taxes to be spent on 
an army and navy. 

That this is no mere personal opinion of mine has been 
abundantly proved by the tremendous public response 
to the campaign which the New York '* World" has been 
conducting in favor of international disarmament. It 
is not exaggerating to say that ninety-nine out of every 
one hundred intelligent and influential Americans, 
Canadians, and Englishmen who have expressed them- 
selves through the columns of that newspaper have de- 
clared themselves unreservedly against further naval and 
military expenditures. 

As for Japan, the effect of her own bad financial and 
industrial condition and her crushing military expendi- 
tures cannot be construed as simply as Europe's or 
America's. The reasons for this will be considered at 
some length in a later chapter. Enough to say here that, 
while discontent seems to be growing in Japan, specially 
over militaristic taxes, which now make up more than 
half of the imperial budget, we find evidences of the same 
ominous tendency that swept Germany into war in 1914, 
namely the feeling that the Government, having invested 
millions in armament, would be foolish if it did not do its 
utmost to make the investment pay a profit. This feeling 
is intensified by the very one that swa^^ed a good many 
militarists in Germany, to wit, the suspicion that inter- 
national affairs may before very long shape themselves so 
that such profit-taking by force of arms will become im- 
possible. Japan, we must bear in mind, is the only large 
nation in the world whose rulers and common people alike 
have not yet learned by bitter experience that in the long 



28 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

run money spent on wars of conquest is a dead loss — and 
worse. And we must likewise remember that in these 
circumstances an industrial and financial depression like 
the present one in Japan inevitably stirs certain groups 
of citizens to seek relief in foreign adventure and to win 
official support for such adventure. 

This depression is now very grave, and in the opinion 
of expert observers will grow much worse before it takes 
a turn for the better. It is worth our while to glance at 
some of its aspects as revealed in our own consular re- 
ports. The November letters to our Department of Com- 
merce give us a gloomy picture of stagnation throughout 
the empire. Postal-savings deposits have been decreasing 
at the rate of nearly half a million yen a day, despite 
strenuous official efforts to stimulate them. The railways 
are discharging workers, as a consequence of dwindling 
traffic. At the end of August eighty ships lay idle, and 
the number was steadily increasing at all ports. In 
Tokio there used to be five automobiles sold every day. 
Now one is being sold, and that one is usually a second- 
hand machine. In one month, since the depression 
began, ninety automobile licenses were turned in for can- 
cellation, and less than one half of all the cars in town 
are being used at all. In Kobe and Osaka wages were 
cut fifteen per cent, in August. Thousands of factory 
and shop workers are streaming back to their old homes 
in the country, for on November 20 all the silk mills of 
the country, with but a few exceptions, closed down for 
ninety days, because they could not afford to operate, 
with the prevailing wage scales and silk prices. In the 
hope of finding much cheaper labor some factories are 
now preparing to move to Korea and China, and our 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 29 

trade commissioners believe that this tendency will grow 
and spread. 

Not a few distinguished economists, surveying such 
facts as these, assure us that war is impossible or at least, 
if begun in a fit of foolishness, must quickly end. We 
recall a number of distinguished theorists who proved 
this neatly in the summer of 1914. We even remember 
one or two who repeated their demonstrations after the 
Germans were intrenched before the walls of Paris. Con- 
fidently these experts assured us that people were too 
poor to pay for a modem war, and hence the war simply 
could not go on. But somehow the war did. To-day 
even some economists have learned that wars are made 
and won and lost more by psychology than by economics. 
To-day all Europe is witnessing half a dozen demonstra- 
tions of this truth. We see bankrupt Poland blithely 
fighting on and on. We observe penniless Turks and 
Hindus massing to shatter the British Empire up and 
down the Mesopotamian Valley, in a war which already 
has become as costly and as exhausting as the Boer War 
was and which, according to the London ''Times," can 
never yield profits in oil that will compensate for the 
thousands of lives destroyed and the hundreds of mil- 
lions of pounds ''poured into that repellent region." 
We look upon poor bankrupt France plotting a dozen 
wars all over Eastern Europe and even making the ges- 
ture of financing them. Would it not seem rash then to 
declare that Japan's recently weakened financial state 
will restrain her from war? Cannot poor men fight in 
the high hope of becoming rich? Must a man have a 
dollar in his pocket in order to strike a foe down with 
a stone ? Have not beggars been known to smash in shop 



30 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

windows, to seize a loaf of bread ? Let us beware of the 
economists who base everything on a theory of money. 
Not money, but men, material, and morale will decide the 
coming, as well as the finish, of a war between East and 
West. 

We are now in a position to estimate the fourth influ- 
ence that makes for peace ; namely, Japan 's economic de- 
pendence upon the United States. Few Americans real- 
ize that, to-day and for some few years to come, this is 
by far the strongest deterrent to war. How far into the 
future it will continue nobody knows. Certainly the 
Japanese are doing their utmost to emancipate themselves 
from the thraldom, and their activities on the continent 
of Asia warrant the supposition that within a few dec- 
ades their manufacturers may be able to dispense with 
our raw materials and even our equipment machinery. 

So far as the Japanese-California crisis of 1920 is con- 
cerned, however, we can safely declare that the new in- 
dustrialists of Japan and their financial agents must and 
will exert themselves to prevent a breach between their 
Government and our own. The reasons for this appear 
startlingly in the trade reports. 

Far and away the largest and most profitable industry 
of Japan is the production of raw silk. In 1919 the 
country exported to the world at large $310,873,825 
worth of it. Of this immense total the United States 
bought no less than $299,520,354 worth. Out of every 
$100 worth, we took more than $96. Add to raw silk 
the various forms of silk goods, and you find that in the 
same year we bought more than $327,000,000 worth from 
Japan, which exceeds eighty-seven per cent, of that em- 
pire's total amount exported. Naturally, Japanese silk 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 31 

producers and manufacturers are not to be found among 
those clamoring for war with us. 

Japan's second largest industry is textiles. In 1919 
she exported $139,735,064 of cotton tissues and around 
$71,000,000 of miscellaneous cotton goods, such as tow- 
els, underclothing, and the like. The fiber out of which 
she makes these she buys in almost equal amounts from 
India and the United States. In 1919 we sold her manu- 
facturers $142,627,053 worth of raw cotton, all of which 
was superior to the bales from India, where only a very 
low grade of short staple is produced in any quantity. 
Now, Japan buys cotton not only for her export trade, 
but also for her own raiment. She produces virtually 
no cotton or wool and is thus utterly dependent upon 
India and the United States to clothe the nakedness of 
her millions. In the event of war she would also have to 
draw on one or both of these same sources for cotton to be 
used in the manufacture of explosives. The significance 
of these facts begins to appear startlingly when we recall 
that the Philippine Islands completely dominate every 
sea route between India and Japan. For almost a thou- 
sand miles they flank the China Sea, and they are equally 
a most convenient base of operations for a blockading 
fleet that might patrol the open Pacific between Malaysia 
and Japan. We may grant that the United States would 
probably have great difficulty in holding its own against 
the Japanese in the Philippines, but it would still be 
true that even a partly successful interruption of Japan's 
cotton supply from India, if coupled with a total suspen- 
sion of cotton exports from our own country to Japan, 
would inevitably precipitate a tremendous crisis in the 
island empire — a crisis certainly more serious than that 



32 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

caused in Germany by the cutting off of overseas cotton 
imports during the Allied blockade of the Baltic Sea and 
the North Sea. There would be left to the Japanese only 
one possible source of cotton, and that source a meager 
and uncertain one. It would be China. In 1919 this 
country sent to Japan $38,219,886 worth of raw cotton, 
or about eleven per cent, of the total needed by Japan. 
Would the Chinese cotton-growers and brokers deliver 
even this much, though, in case Japan were at war with 
us ? It can scarcely be entertained as a serious prospect, 
so intense is the hatred of Japan among the Chinese. 
The chances are that China would rather make ingenious 
efforts to divert every pound of fiber from her deadly 
foe. And there can be no doubt that Japanese textile 
manufacturers are painfully aware of all this. The 
American shipping concerns in the Pacific area know it. 
Indeed, some of their best -informed officials have told me 
that a cotton embargo and blockade could completely 
ruin Japan within ninety days and drive the militarists 
from power. This seems pretty extreme, and too good 
to be true ; but it is worth recording here as an opinion. 

At present Japan is wofully dependent upon us for 
her supply of semi-finished iron and steel, as well as for 
engines and machinery. Look again at the figures for 
1919. Japan bought $78,103,811 worth of bars, rods, 
plates, and the like from foreign countries, of which total 
we furnished $66,761,099 worth. She bought $44,477,135 
worth of engines and machines, of which we supplied ex- 
actly three quarters. And we furnished almost every 
dollar's worth of materials she bought for building 
bridges, docks, railways, and ships. All of which would 
indicate that her new industrial life is closely bound up 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR PEACE 33 

with our own. Buying from us and selling to us in vol- 
ume more than twice as great as their gross trade with 
any other country, Japanese merchants and manufactur- 
ers must be profoundly interested in maintaining the 
friendliest of relations with the United States. And, as 
a matter of fact, we do find this to be their attitude. The 
anti-American sentiment in Japan to-day does not ema- 
nate from these powerful groups, nor does it find even a 
faint echo in them; and they are steadfastly opposing 
the various sinister influences that make for ill feeling 
and war. 

Does all this warrant the belief that war is too remote 
a possibility to be seriously discussed ? Alas ! no. Over 
against these pacific influences we find many vicious ones, 
and still more which, while not vicious, are even more 
dangerous because they root in venerable traditions, in 
folk-ways, in popular ignorance, and in that fatal inca- 
pacity of most men to think clearly and take intelligent 
action concerning matters that lie beyond the routine of 
their everyday life. We must consider all such forces, 
in Japan as well as at home, for on a clear understanding 
of them hinges a wise solution of the present crisis. 



CHAPTER 4 
FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 

BEFORE the World War many Americans boasted of 
our ''magnificent isolation" and our freedom from 
** entangling alliances." They felt the United States 
to be a world apart, an earthly paradise uncontami- 
nated by the ills of the Old World. From 1914 to 
1917 this traditional outlook steadily changed its colors, 
and was finally abandoned as out-of-date and perilous. 
The menace of Prussian militarism stretched across the 
Atlantic and stirred us to take a strenuous part in shap- 
ing the destinies of the rest of the world, and on Armis- 
tice Day it looked to most of us as if our nation was about 
to assume that very moral leadership of the world which 
had been so ardently professed by Wilson and echoed by 
the Committee of Public Information. 

What has happened since that day demonstrates that 
Americans have not miraculously changed their folk- 
ways. It has proved that we are no more intelligent and 
no more adaptable than any of the European groups 
from which our hodge-podge population is derived. 
Both the calamitous transactions at Versailles and the 
tremendous anti-Wilson vote of the recent election con- 
stitute the most complete exhibition in all modem his- 
tory of the laws of social inertia and the pragmatic na- 
ture of human thought, about which our social psycholo- 
gists have been talking these many years. American pro- 

34 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 35 

vincialism is the natural consequence of the working of 
these laws in our unique environment. We must look 
carefully at it, because it is one of the two gravest perils 
in the present crisis. 

Social inertia is the resistance to change in our ways 
of thinking and doing. It is merely another name for a 
vast complex of well-established habits. These habits 
range from such simple affairs as eating breakfast foods 
and using wooden toothpicks up to such highly intellec- 
tual processes as defending the traditional American 
ideals of ''life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness/* 
the Monroe Doctrine, the purchase of a home on the in- 
stalment plan, and so on. Each of these habits is the 
result of a long and more or less skilful adaptation to 
certain conditions in one's environment. 

And it is one of the outstanding discoveries of modern 
psychology that the skill a man acquires in building up 
one habit can be transferred to a new and different sub- 
ject only in proportion to the degree of resemblance be- 
tween the original subject and the new one. Thus you 
might acquire much proficiency in reading Greek, but 
this habit would be of no use to you m repairing umbrel- 
las, and it would be of very slight value in helping you 
to speak French. The motions you go through in mend- 
ing an umbrella are quite different from those you must 
make in conjugating a Greek verb and translating The- 
ocritus. And so, too, with the mental operations in- 
volved. To become expert in mending umbrellas, you 
had best mend umbrellas for a few years. If you wish 
to speak French well, do not waste time on Greek or 
Latin; the same time spent on French will yield much 
richer results. 



36 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Now this general law of habit holds good of every sub- 
ject under the sun. Neither politics nor morals offers a 
single exception to it. Once you grasp this tremendous i 
fact, you will understand many events in recent Ameri- 
can history which may have been dark to you. 

For instance, the disconcerting collapse of our ideal- 
istic efforts at the peace conference. As a psychologist 
sees tiiat dismal fiasco, we Americans were in pretty much 
the same situation at Paris as a school-boy would be who, 
after having studied Greek for four years in the fond 
hope that it would "train his mind," finds himself on 
board a ship with a disabled engine and a mutinous 
crew, and undertakes to repair the engine and subdue 
the rioters with his trained mind. 

For three full generations we Americans had been 
acquiring the habit of turning our backs on Europe. 
We had been acquiring the habit of busying ourselves 
with our own domestic problems and aspirations. In 
such light esteem did we hold our relations with the 
rest of the world that we regularly appointed ex-saloon- 
keepers, shoddy lawyers, and third cousins of hill-billy 
Congressmen to represent the United States abroad in 
the diplomatic and consular services. And our State De- 
partment was, in comparison with similar European in- 
stitutions, a feeble joke. In all America there existed no 
sizable group of citizens who had habitually dealt with 
British colonial policies or with European railway prob- 
lems or with Turkish finances. And it followed inex- 
orably that on the day when we had to deal with such 
intricate issues we were utterly unable to do so. One 
does not pick up full understanding of Europe overnight. 
One does not do it even by reading "The Literary Di- 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 37 

gest'' and the ''Saturday Evening Post." Habit is too 
strong. 

Reinforcing this immense social inertia, the law of in- 
terest stands as the second force that makes for provin- 
cialism always. Men give their undivided attention and 
their best mental effort only to things which either dis- 
turb their ways of comfortable living or else gratify 
their desires. Whenever they are led to think about any- 
thing else, they think lazily, at random, and in a more or 
less inconsequential fashion, not bothering to check up 
closely on either the facts or their own conclusions. 
When nothing is at stake, both truth and consistency 
cease to be virtues. 

This is the most natural result of the law of adaptation 
that runs through all life. In man's million-year strug- 
gle for existence it has always been his own immediate 
surroundings to which he has been compelled to attend 
or perish. It has always been the lion in the path, the 
mote in the eye, the thief in the night, the bird in the 
hand, that has commanded serious attention and in- 
genious action. Things long ago and far away could be 
overlooked, but the day's hunger and thirst and storms 
and plagues and quarrels had to be managed. Thus 
upon these latter men came to concentrate their wits. 

Hence it is that to-day the average citizen instinct- 
ively devotes more time and thought trying to find who 
borrowed his hammer while he was talking with the fore- 
man than he spends on devising a budget system for the 
United States. And for this same reason you can trust 
his judgment and his behavior in choosing a dog to hunt 
rabbits with, but not in deciding whether the United 
States ought to assume a mandate over Armenia. 



38 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

If this were the proper place for such an analysis, we 
might show this law of interest, combining with the law 
of habit, shaped almost every disastrous move, as well as 
every wise one, since 1914. It was these two laws and 
nothing else that kept us out of the war until 1917. It 
was the law of interest that finally led us to crush Ger- 
many, and it was the two laws that caused our soldiers 
and their relatives back home to wish nothing better 
than to get back to the old town, forget Europe and its 
nastiness, and play ball again. The two most completely 
typical Americanisms of the last six years were the empty 
idealism of Wilson's Paris program and the savage reac- 
tion against internationalism in all its forms, culminating 
in the prodigious vote given to Harding last November. 
Here we cannot explain this statement as fully as it de- 
serves to be. We must hasten to show how the two great 
mental laws are making the Japanese crisis an unusually 
difficult one to present fairly and to solve. 

There seem to be only three habits of thinking about 
Japan which are present in enough Americans to make 
them at all influential politically. They are : 

1. The missionary habit. 

2. The California habit, and 

3. The foreign trade habit. 

The missionary habit has two radically different, and 
even antagonistic, forms. One is the old, the other the 
new. There can be little doubt that to-day the old form 
dominates the thinking of many more Americans than 
the new form does. We still find it clearly expressed in 
the more conservative religious publications and we hear 
it at missionary meetings, especially where funds are 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 39 

being raised for the ''poor heathen." This phrase, 
' ' poor heathen, ' ' fairly characterizes the habit. The pic- 
ture which the average American churchman has of 
Japan is that which virtually all missionaries used to 
draw twenty years ago and earlier. Somewhat abridged 
and conventionalized, it contains the following scenes : 

Japan is a heathen country full of half-civilized or 
barbarous people who have never enjoyed the blessings 
of Christian civilization. They are terribly ignorant and 
scandalously immoral. The Government runs houses of 
ill fame. Little children are taught to worship graven 
images. And there are hundreds of villages without a 
single Methodist or Baptist church. Thieves and mur- 
derers abound on every hand, and the shopkeepers cheat 
their customers whenever they get a chance. 

We shall have something to say in later chapters about 
this conventional view of Japan. Enough here to re- 
mark that it is considerably less than a half-truth and 
wofully misleading. 

The new missionary view, which has become the habit- 
ual one in many younger Americans, gives us an almost 
diametrically opposed panorama of the far-away empire. 
It is the brotherhood-of-man doctrine applied to Japan, 
somewhat as follows : 

The Japanese are human beings like ourselves in every 
respect. They know the same hopes and fears, they have 
the same loves and hates. They work for a living, save 
money, try to get along with their neighbors, and go out 
of their way to seek trouble no more than Americans do. 
They have politicians and schemers, business men and 
priests, agitators and high-minded reformers, even as we 
do. The differences between them and us are all super- 



40 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ficial. They dress differently, speak a strange tongue, 
and do various little things in manners odd to us. It is 
only our own ignorance that leads us to think that such 
customs mean anything. 

This view, while much more charitable than the old 
missionary picture, is unfortunately a half-truth. Of 
this more later. 

The California habit of thinking about Japan likewise 
has two forms. The better known one is the journalistic 
view, which has been spread abroad chiefly by the Hearst 
newspapers and is to-day probably the most widely dis- 
seminated opinion about Japan east of the Mississippi 
River. Millions of copies of cheap nev/spapers have 
been spreading it for the last ten years. The mere act 
of seeing it in print so often has fixed it in thousands of 
minds. Here is the picture it presents : 

Japan is the most diabolical conspiracy on earth. The 
mikado and a few evil old aristocrats known as the Elder 
Statesmen, seeing the attractions of the Philippines, Ha- 
waii, California, and China, are secretly planning to 
invade all these lands and conquer them. They are 
building a colossal navy and drilling a mighty army. 
They have flooded the United States with spies. Every 
Japanese valet is a spy, instructed to read his employer's 
private letters and report on the same to Tokio. Every 
Japanese working on section gangs of our Pacific-coast 
railways is a spy who finds good places to plant bombs to 
blow up railway bridges and switch towers when the 
mikado invades California. Millions of Japanese have 
already been secretly landed in Mexico and are hiding in 
the hills, there to await the great day when America feills 
under their assaults. 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 41 

The reader who supposes that the above paragraph has 
been written in the attempt to be funny must disillusion 
himself. Not a line of that picture has been invented. 
The present writer has studied several hundred news 
items on Japan published in the Hearst papers during 
the last decade and has found not only these allegations, 
but scores of others so ridiculous that only children and 
morons could have taken them seriously. Needless to 
say, this journalistic picture is a jumble in which fact is 
sadly overlaid with fancy. 

There is another habit of appraising Japan and the 
Japanese in California which few Americans outside that 
State know about. It has almost wholly displaced the 
above journalistic habit out there. It is the new habit 
of those farmers, ranch-owners, and business men who 
have gained some degree of real understanding. It is 
peculiarly hard to characterize this opinion briefly. It 
has arisen out of many facts strange to most Americans, 
and it is rather bewildering unless supplemented by full 
explanations. So we must defer all accounts of it for 
the moment. Of all the mental habits worthy of men- 
tion, this one is at present the weakest and the least dan- 
gerous. Indeed, the only danger in it lies in the ease 
with which its real significance may be misunderstood. 

The foreign trade habit also is twofold. There is the 
habit of the American shipowner, which is also held by 
those manufacturers who are meeting or expect to meet 
with competition from the Japanese. According to this 
opinion, Japan is determined to master the trade of the 
Pacific and will stop at nothing to accomplish her pur- 
pose. It is a land where the Government and big busi- 
ness are one, hence a land whose diplomacy and interna- 



42 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tional politics are invariably molded to the desires of her 
captains of industry. The masses do not count. It is 
only a matter of years when Japan will have driven 
American ships off the Pacific and American goods out 
of Asia. Her military despotism is only the tool of her 
economic despotism. 

There is a good deal of truth in this opinion, as we 
shall try to show ; but it omits many vital elements from 
the picture. And some of these omissions give rise to 
serious misunderstandings as to Japan's motives and 
methods. 

The other foreign trade habit is much newer and, while 
present in very few Americans, happens to control the 
thinking of a small group of immensely powerful citi- 
zens. It is the opinion of the international bankers. 
These gentlemen see in Japan a shrewd and highly useful 
partner in the greatest enterprise of all time; namely, 
the industrialization of Asia. In this colossal under- 
taking Japan is to furnish the labor, and America the 
capital. China will be allowed to contribute, of course; 
but the financiers of Wall Street and the industrialists 
of Osaka and Kobe will manage the affair. Japan and 
her ruling class are America's best friends. We have 
one interest in the Pacific area, they have another; and 
each is necessary to the other. By cooperation both 
Japan and America will reap enormous profits. 

This opinion is correct as far as it goes. But the nar- 
rowness of its economic interest prevents it from giving 
us a full picture of Japan; and here, as in earlier in- 
stances, the view is full of danger. 

How incomplete all these ways of appraising Japan 
are! To realize their short-comings, you have only to 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 43 

conjure up parallel opinions about our own country such 
as you may find aired in the entertaining volumes of 
those distinguished foreign tourists who tarry a week in 
New York or lecture to Boston for a winter on the higher 
philosophies of India. The sorry fact is that the Ameri- 
can public has no thinking habits that are at the same 
time old enough, comprehensive enough, and accurate 
enough to form a basis for a national policy with regard 
to Japan. Unhappily, we have fallen into several habits 
that are so perversive and so old that we cannot discard, 
them by a mere act of will. The two most harmful of 
these certainly are the old missionary habit and the jour- 
nalistic habit. The unwillingness of Americans to treat 
Orientals as political equals can be partly traced to the 
deep, sometimes hazy, but always strong feeling that Ori- 
entals really are what the old-school missionary declared 
them to be, ''poor heathen." This feeling has been in- 
terminably reinforced by the shrieking and sensation- 
peddling of the back-stairs newspapers. Both habits are, 
of course, doomed to weaken and die, but they may linger 
long enough to cause incurable mischief. 

They would not linger if many Americans had any 
vital and clearly recognized interests in Japan. But 
they have not. There is less personal contact between 
Japanese and Americans to-day than there was between 
Germans and Americans before the World War, and for 
every one American who has something at stake in Japan, 
be it money or friendships or family ties, there are a 
thousand who are intimately concerned over somebody 
or something in Germany. Millions of our citizens still 
have parents, grandparents, or other relatives in Ger- 
many. Not a thousand of us have any such in Japan. 



44 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

So, too, in the business field. While the volume of trade 
between Japan and the United States is immense, the 
number of Americans whose fortunes are bound up in it 
is very small. As has already been shown, the bulk of 
our buying in Japan is in silk, most of which goes to a 
hundred or more corporations. As for our selling, which 
is mostly raw cotton and semi-finished iron and steel, it 
is mostly consummated through a few export houses; 
and the world demand for these products is so vast that 
it makes little difference to our cotton-grower or ouP 
miner whether Japan buys or not. Strictly speaking, 
there has never been any public sentiment in the United 
States over foreign trade, or over any other foreign rela- 
tions, for that matter. And the reason is that America 
is economically self-sufficient and also has such an enor- 
mous domestic demand for all sorts of commodities that 
our manufacturers and distributors did not have to worry 
much over foreign orders save in a few lines, mostly 
food-stuffs and raw materials. And it is a notorious 
commonplace that for many years much of our foreign 
trade in manufactured goods was allowed to go by default 
to concerns who cared nothing at all for their customers 
after cashing the remittance checks and who violated 
every clause in the moral code of decent business, to the 
everlasting injury of our country. Of this commercial 
provincialism Japan has had her taste. And, as for our 
own mercantile and commercial classes, the habit con- 
tinues to-day in the milder form of indifference toward 
and ignorance of Japan and her affairs. 

It is only on the Pacific coast that provincialism with 
respect to Japan is not to be found. The Califomians 
find more than one vital interest in the affairs of that 



FORCES THAT MAKE FOR WAR 45 

land and have had more than one occasion to think se- 
riousl}' about them. American shipping interests out 
there are in competition with the Japanese and have to 
reckon with them constantly. Storekeepers in the 
smaller towns are rapidly coming to the same pass. 
Farmers are encountering these aliens in new quarters 
from VN^eek to week. In the banking business, in the fish- 
eries, and other lines, Japanese workers and Japanese 
money have ceased to be shadowy things concerning 
which juvenile newspaper scribblers may lightly dis- 
course. The rest of our country does not yet understand 
this. You hear on every hand east of Denver that the 
whole hullabaloo out on the coast is just another sputter 
of yellow journalism. Scarcely one Eastern newspaper 
of good repute takes the Japanese crisis seriously. And 
in this indifference, born of ancient habits and lack of 
personal interest, we find a menace to world peace. 



CHAPTER 5 
ILLUSIONS ABOUT JAPAN 

LACK of contact with Japanese and ignorance of the 
Japanese language have been responsible for sev- 
eral false impressions about this far-away land. Some 
of these impressions have been highly favorable and 
therefore have been widely exploited by all lovers of 
Japan, including the paid propagandists. Others have 
been equally unfavorable and injurious, and so the 
enemies of Japan have heralded them abroad. In the 
interest, not of scientific truth, but of steering the 
American public along its increasingly difficult course in 
foreign affairs, we must give brief attention to the more 
consequential of these good and bad illusions. 

The most widely known and universally held illusion 
has to do with the supposedly superhuman adaptability 
of the Japanese. The friends of Japan harp upon it 
incessantly, while some foes imitate a shudder as they 
refer to it as a sure sign that Japan is a world menace. 
The picture that is held up to us is that of some sixty 
million idolatrous barbarians languishing in a primeval 
state, living in tribes, worshipping strange gods, and 
being generally rather Neolithic until some forty odd 
years ago, when some highly civilized states on the oppo- 
site side of the earth impinged upon their simple soli- 
tude. The sixty million idolatrous barbarians looked 

46 



ILLUSIONS ABOUT JAPAN 47 

with awe upon the steamships and strange inventions. 
They trembled before the alien cannon. Then, deciding 
that intelligence was a sound investment, even if it did 
cost money, they sent their chieftains abroad to master 
the secrets of success in Big Business. Then the miracle ! 
In the twinkling of a nation's eye, Japan made herself 
over from a feudal state on the level of thirteenth- 
century Europe to a twentieth-century nation on a par 
with Great Britain and the United States. 

Now, any psychologist and any student of the social 
sciences knows, even without the slightest special infor- 
mation about the Japanese, that this is unadulterated non- 
sense. It is a commonplace among scientific observers 
that group habits can not be transformed at any such 
rate. Not even in our own country, which loves to think 
of itself as faster than any other in absorbing new ideas 
and ways, has any such miracle occurred. Let him who 
thinks otherwise consider a few indisputable facts, such 
as American behavior with respect to the negro and to- 
ward liquor, to cite only two from a possible list of a 
hundred. 

Nearly sixty years have gone by since our Government 
Preed the negro and gave him political rights. A Japa- 
nese student, poring over an American history in a Tokio 
[ibrary, would probably see in his mind's eye this whole 
[•ace of oppressed people casting aside its shackles, as the 
lews of the Emancipation Proclamation was flashed 
icross the land, and marching to the polls, running for 
)flice, and grabbing off sundry political plums. This, be 
it observed, is just what the American reader imagines 
;o be happening when he reads that the Japanese have 
aid aside their ancient ways and become Westernized. 



48 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Of course, what has really happened is that the old 
Anglo-American habit, hundreds of years old, of regard- 
ing the negro as black trash has not been weakened per- 
ceptibly by any mere pen strokes or political affirma- ; 
tions. So far as real political liberty or suffrage is con- 
cerned, the blacks as a group are scarcely a step ahead 
of where they were in 1860. 

Our same reader in a Tokio library, perusing the news 
of the past months in an American paper, learns that 
our great commonwealth decided, over night, that alcohol 
was an insidious evil and must be forthwith extermi- 
nated. He reads of breweries being closed from the 
Atlantic to the Pacfic. He reads about thousands of sa- 
loon doors being closed forever, bars being dismantled, 
and armies of disconsolate bartenders seeking jobs as 
butlers. And doubtless he exclaims with awe: "What 
a race of supermen these Americans are ! We Japanese 
could never give up sake this way. ' ' But, as he exclaims, 
some millions of respectable American citizens, bishops 
and bankers, statesmen and delicatessen dealers, white 
and black, rich and poor, are busily brewing beer and 
concocting amateur whisky in their kitchens. As every 
man's house is his castle, so every man's kitchen is his 
distillery. And it will be for many years to come, in 
spite of all that lawmakers may say or do. For it is 
much easier to make laws than to break habits. 

As with us, so with Japan. The Government of that 
country has been passing many laws, introducing many 
improvements, from railroads down to motion pictures, 
and working in the direction of a Western civilization. 
But the old deep habits of looking to the clan heads, of 
leaning on the Elder Statesmen, of feeling superior to 



ILLUSIONS ABOUT JAPAN 49 

the foreigner still persist beneath the veneer of statute 
and ordinance. We see this truth from a significant 
angle when we study at close range the "democratic 
trend" in Japan. 

There is some truth in the view that powerful social 
and economic forces are tending to force the country- 
further and further toward something that might be 
called a democratic social order. But let us keep in 
mind that such social forces operate very much as ordi- 
nary physical forces do ; when they encounter resistance, 
they are first of all and to a considerable degree expended 
in overcoming the inertia of the thing to be moved. Not 
until a certain critical point and quantum have been at- 
tained does any actual motion result. So in Japan to- 
day. As we shall later point out in some detail, even the 
most recent extensions of the suffrage under Hara fall 
much further short of true universal suffrage than they 
seem to on paper. But, even if they did not, Japan 
would still be profoundly different from the Western 
democracies as a result of the almost unaltered survival 
of the local power of the clans and of the go-no, or village 
superintendent. 

Japanese society still roots in the clan, in spite of the 
many encroachments upon the political domination of 
this institution during recent years. The clan dialects 
are still spoken in most of the country districts. The 
special uniforms of the clans are commonly worn. And 
it is through the clan that the vast majority of citizens, 
namely those in the rural districts, get in touch with 
political affairs, secure Government posts, and receive 
instructions as to voting. Ever since feudal days, the 
small farmers have been held strictly under the control 



50 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

and discipline of the village superintendent; and Japa- 
nese authorities themselves admit that the go-no's power 
to-day exceeds that of the harshest political boss in the 
lowest ward of Chicago or Boston. 

The illusion of democracy goes further. Most pro- 
Japanese writers are fond of pointing to the rise of po- 
litical parties in Japan as a sign that the people have 
suddenly become democratic. But one might as well call 
the United States Steel Corporation a sign of democracy 
in America. In the narrowest sense of the term, the 
Japanese party is a class, born of class interests and per- 
petuating class privileges and powers. 

The Seiyukai, of which Hara is the head, is in the main 
made up of the rural capitalists, or farm landowners, 
who live on rents collected from small tenants and gen- 
erally preserve the ideas and practices of the old feudal- 
ism. The Kenseikai, the other important party to-day, 
is a solid body of the urban capitalists, the manufac- 
turers and merchants, and the upper salaried classes em- 
ployed by the new industrial powers of Japan. The 
reader familiar with early American politics will note 
that they correspond somewhat to the original American 
Democrats and Republicans, who were respectively the 
rich farmers and the urban moneyed class. Like our own 
early political parties, they are essentially old-school 
bourgeoisie, with never a thought as to the interests of 
the masses of farm or city workers. 

Within these parties there is absolute one-man rule, 
which is the only rule the average Japanese understands. 
The statement has been made by Japanese students of 
government that a council of eight Seiyukai leaders and 
the chief, Hara, settle everything as to platforms, pro- 



ILLUSIONS ABOUT JAPAN 51 

grams, and detailed procedure. There is not even the 
:pretense of open caucus or national convention or any- 
thing smacking of true party control. 

So too with the militarism of Japan, which has been 
lately explained away as an unfortunate imitation of 
Germany. True, the details of the military reforms in- 
troduced after the Ito mission returned from its famous 
trip of study through the Western nations are wholly 
Teutonic; and the military leaders of to-day were all 
educated in German}^. But the fact remains that for 
centuries Japan has been a military nation in the com- 
pletest sense. The life of the clans was organized around 
the warrior and chieftain. And the many old habits of 
thought and action rooting in the feudal order still live. 
One significant survival is that of the intense feeling of 
''national honor," probably more acute in Japan than 
anywhere else to-day. No European country, not even 
in its rhetorical moment, thinks of worrying over na- 
tional honor any more. The war put an end to that. 
Men worry now over the realities — bread, a roof, trousers 
anti-typhus serum, work, and escape from the crushing 
taxes of war. But Japan is sensitive, as the whole con- 
troversy over immigration in California has shown. 

All of these illusions and many others which cannot 
be here discussed befog the entire debate about Japan. 
At almost every turn statements about the country can 
be attacked by the simple citation of some law that has 
been passed, some new organization that is running suc- 
cessfully, or some fine social movement that looks for all 
the world, at this distance, just like movements we know 
at home. And in many cases it is possible to discover 
what 's what only by going to Japan and scrutinizing the 



52 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

things themselves. And even then the foreign observer 
operates under a grave handicap of language and the 
even graver one of being compelled to judge things by 
externals. 

So much for the faults and dangers on our own side. 
Let us now look at those very different ones on the side 
of the Japanese. 



BOOK II 
THE SITUATION IN JAPAN 



CHAPTER 6 
FORM OF GOVERNMENT 

THE parallel between Japan to-day and Germany be- 
fore 1914 is one of the closest and most significant in 
all history. It involves many more features than we have 
space to present in these pages, and most of them have 
not yet been understood by even our more intelligent 
classes, let alone the rank and file of citizenship. Yet 
without the clearest insight into these national resem- 
blances we Americans will inevitably misconceive the 
needs and the demands and the policies of the Japanese 
Government, as well as the very different needs and de- 
mands and policies of the Japanese people. 

The first likeness between Japan and pre-war Germany 
is to be found in the antiquated form of government com- 
mon to both. The Japanese still allow themselves to be 
taught in infancy that the mikado has been placed in 
power by God, and that obedience to him is a religious 
duty. Listen to the following statement by a Japanese 
professor, George Uyehara, who has written important 
works on Japanese political history : 

"The divine right of the Emperor, however absurd it may 
seem to the theorists of individuahstic idealism, still holds a 
predominant place in the minds of the Japanese; and its po- 
litical value seems to be as important to the Japanese nation as 
the religious values of miracles and mythological and allegorical 
stories is to certain religions. . . . 

55 



56 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

"This divine right is the fundamental principle on which the 
Japanese policj^ was first established and on which it still 
rests. . . . 

"In fact, the term matsnrigoto, meaning worship, is etymo- 
logically in pure Japanese identical with that of govern- 
ment. . . . 

"That the Mikado reigns and governs the country abso- 
lutely by a right inherited from his divine ancestors, is the 
unconscious belief or the instinctive feeling of the Japanese 
people. Indeed, it may be said to be their religion — religion 
in the sense of the ^inner voice' as defined by Matthew Ar- 
nold.^' 

Let any reader compare this with the only too familiar 
chatter of the former kaiser about his intimate relations 
with Deity and his slogan, ' ' Gott mit Uns. ' ' Or compare 
it again with the awe and servility the Prussian masses 
manifested toward the throne for many generations. 
Japan to-day is the sole important survivor of that gro- 
tesque theocracy which was common in the days when 
all men were savages. 

The second likeness worth noting here is the peculiar 
relation of the ruling classes to the emperor on one hand 
and to the common folk on the other. The groups who 
dominate Japanese political life array themselves around 
the seven Genro, or Elder Statesmen, each of whom is 
the commanding figure of some political party. The 
members of these groups are the shrewd business men, 
bankers, large land owners, and manufacturers. And, of 
course, they embrace the military and naval leaders, 
whose political power is unusually well entrenched. On 
the fringe of each political constellation is to be found 
a horde of the minor bureaucrats, from post-office, secret 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT 57 

police, customs, and railways. All these people repre- 
sent the brains of Japan, or perhaps it would be fairer 
to say the trained intelligence of the country. And this 
group literally owns and runs Japan. No estimate has 
ever been made public as to the approximate size of the 
ruling classes, but no student of government would be 
inclined to place it higher than a quarter million, and 
probably 125,000 would come nearer the truth. Upon 
this handful of patriots the seventy or more million 
Japanese are utterly dependent, so much so and with 
such willinj^ness that they have a special word in Japa-: 
nese to designate this national trait, namely Seifumanno^ 
Shugi. This oligarchy has not been imposed upon the 
people by brute force. It is the natural expression of 
their extremely low political development, just as loy- 
alty to the Prussian oligarchy was the expression of the 
political backwardness of the Prussian peasants. 

In asserting that this oligarchy owns and runs Japan 
we are indulging in no rash and ill-founded generaliza- 
tion. Every person who has made the slightest survey of 
Japanese affairs at first-hand knows this to be strictly 
true. Japan to-day has achieved the ideal of state social- 
ism at which the kaiser's bureaucracy aimed, and has 
done so without the restraint that is theoretically sup- 
posed to be imposed upon that form of government by 
way of forestalling despotism. The Japanese Govern- 
ment, which is in reality the mikado and the ruling 
classes just described, is not in any genuine sense respon- 
sible to the people. The Japanese constitution, such as 
it is, derives its authority from the mikado alone. It is 
his to give and to take away. Neither is he responsible 
to the cabinet nor to the Diet. And the cabinet, in turn, 



58 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

is responsible not to the people, but to the mikado. On 
all this Article IV of the Japanese Constitution is ad- 
mirably clear. It reads thus : 

^'The emperor is the head of the empire, combining in 
himself all the powers of the state.' ^ 

Now it is well known that the mikado himself has little 
to do with the labor of government. He follows with 
virtually no swerving the advice of the Elder Statesmen. 
It is a matter of record that he has never overruled these 
crown advisers in any important matter. We must 
therefore note the peculiar position of the Genro, if we 
would understand the actual management of Japan 
to-day. 

The strange and significant fact about this small and 
powerful group is that legally it is not a part of the 
Government. Nowhere are the Elder Statesmen men- 
tioned in Japanese constitutional law. Neither are they 
attached officially to the Imperial Family, whose affairs 
are governed by special laws. In short, we here behold a 
State actually ruled by a recognized group that, strictly 
speaking, has no business to be mixed up in public affairs. 
To understand its status, the American reader should 
imagine that a small coterie of our citizens having the 
highest social and financial influence had, by the mere 
force of social tradition, come to be recognized as per- 
petual members of the President's Cabinet. To make it 
quite concrete, let us suppose that Lawrence Lowell, Vin- 
cent Astor, John D. Rockefeller, and a few others had be- 
come, not through coercion nor by trickery but by the 
established habits of American society and politics, such 
fixtures in our Administration. Moreover, conceive that 



FORM OF GOVERNMENT 59 

the President never ventured to challenge the decisions 
of these men ; that the American public instinctively- 
looked to them, rather than to the President or Congress, 
for sound leadership in every crisis ; and suppose, finally, 
that absolutely no legal machinery existed whereby these 
Yankee Genro could be called to account or even recog- 
nized as an entity. Then you will have a fair picture of 
the situation in Japan. 

For all practical purposes, the bureaucracy is as well 
intrenched as the Genro. It is secure against almost any 
attack, as well as against a ''boring from within," thanks 
to the skill with which it has shaped the civil service laws 
to protect and perpetuate itself. No government office 
(barring cabinet positions of course) is open to anybody 
save men who have passed civil service examinations and 
worked up through the long ranks. This ruling, intro- 
duced in 1885, has prevented even the leaders of the po- 
litical parties from holding official positions. It is as if, 
in our own country, the office workers in the Washington 
Departments of War, Agriculture, Post Office, and Inte- 
rior, had put through a law that made it impossible 
for any Republican or Democrat to hold any govern- 
ment job, except by going through the whole mill of 
service. 

That does not leave much room for democracy, does it ? 
Nor does it allow us to doubt for very long who owns and 
runs the country, especially after we learn that the State 
owns and operates the postal system, all telephones and 
telegraphs, the railways, most ,of the gas, water, and elec- 
tric plants, the tobacco monopoly, the salt monopoly, and 
the immense camphor industry in Formosa. And, ac- 
cording to Japanese economists, most of the banks, ship- 



60 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

yards, and warehouses in the country are at least partly 
owned and managed by the Government. 

The connection between government and Big Business 
is so unusual in Japan that it must be explained briefly. 
In the Western world most of the great modem indus- 
trial enterprises were the creations of private citizens. 
To be sure, these citizens often sought and gained govern- 
mental aid in the form of subsidies, special tariffs, rail- 
way privileges, exemption from certain taxes, and so on ; 
but rarely, if ever, did the Government inaugurate and 
carry through to a finish the promotion and administra- 
tion of such concerns. In Japan, though, all this has 
been the rule. 

The Government has voted funds for these immense 
industries we have mentioned. It has created the or- 
ganizations and has turned the operation over to its own 
bureaucrats. After things have been set well in motion, 
the title to businesses of no special political importance 
has been transferred to private parties friendly to the 
Genro or the bureaucrats; while all businesses of mili- 
tary or diplomatic value have been jealously retained. 
It is as if the United States Government, during a Re- 
publican administration let us say, had gone into the oil 
business; had taken over all oil fields, wells, refineries 
and pipe lines; had turned the development of all these 
over to the clerks and bureau chiefs in the Department 
of the Interior, which is reputed to be one of the rarest 
collection of fossils in existence; had found the poorer 
fields of no military value and had therefore turned them 
over to the friends of three or four of the bureau chiefs 
at a bargain price; and had kept all the rest of the oil 
business permanently. Imagine this procedure, not 



FORxM OF GOVERNMENT 61 

alone with oil, but with steel, telephones, copper, cotton, 
and half a hundred other major businesses ; then you will 
have some idea of the extraordinary merger of bureau- 
cracy and business in Japan. 

This, as you will at once recognize, even out-Prussias 
old Prussia. It is a frank imitation of Prussianism, 
begun when Japan was starting out to become a world 
power. And the accuracy of imitation is explained by 
the well known fact that the Japanese ruling classes, 
when confronted by the huge problem of organizing their 
state on the level of the Western powers, found in Ger- 
many a population and a culture and a religion and a 
political organization most closely related to Japan both 
in practice and in ideals. Thus came to pass another imi- 
tation, which constitutes the third point of likeness be- 
tween the two nations. 



CHAPTER 7 
CONTROL OF ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 

THE third likeness is the military autocracy. Japan 
sent her young soldiers of the upper classes to Ber- 
lin for their military training^. The Japanese Army was 
organized on the kaiser's model. The Prussian ideas 
of discipline were instilled into rank and file and have 
been enforced with much greater ease than the Prussians 
managed, thanks to the extreme ignorance and peculiar 
loyalty of the ordinary Japanese peasant. But far more 
important than all this is the way the control of affairs 
by the military caste has been fixed upon the country all 
but irrevocably by the Constitution. In the Constitution 
it is provided that a naval officer shall he alone eligible 
to head the Navy Department and an army officer alone 
eligible to head the War Department. No surer means 
could have been devised for retaining all the power of 
government in the hands of the military caste. If you 
wish to feel the full force of this caste-born arrangement, 
imagine our own War Department in 1918 to have been 
completely dominated, from the top downward, by gradu- 
ates of West Point, and our Navy Department similarly 
monopolized by the offspring of Annapolis. Every 
American business man and civilian expert who during 
the war had even a taste of the mental and administrative 
habits of our own military bureaucrats knows how jeal- 

62 



ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 63 

ously they would have kept even the trivial places of 
power within their own cliques — until Germany had won 
the war perhaps ! And not with any malice or treachery 
or cheap politics, but solely through ignorance and pride. 
Thus it was in Germany until things began to go to 
pieces. Thus it is in Japan to-day, where there is no 
immediate prospect of a bureaucratic crisis. 

The fourth likeness appears in the technic of retaining 
power through the systematic shaping and control of 
public opinion. Both Germany and Japan have followed 
the doctrines which Plato, the Greek philosopher-poet, 
advocated more than two thousand years ago in his famous 
book, ''The Republic." Long before the World War 
Japan borrowed from Germany the Platonic thought that 
all people tend to act on the basis of what they believe 
to be the facts in any given case; and hence, if you loish 
to control people completely without friction of any sort, 
all you have to do is supply them with such facts or ap- 
parent facts as will naturally prompt them to do what 
you want them to do, while carefully keeping away from 
them all those other facts which might impel them to act 
contrary to your wishes. 

Plato, who was interested only in the philosophy of 
government and not at all in the defending of any bu- 
reaucracy, candidly admitted that the rulers would often 
find it expedient, if not necessary, to disseminate fictions 
or even downright falsehoods, to which latter Plato gives 
the apologetic name of ''noble lies." The Germans, as 
we all know, followed this policy with a vengeance in a 
manner that would have caused the ancient Greek to turn 
in his grave. They carefully selected the facts to be 
taught in all public and private schools of Germany. 



64 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

They glorified the Pnissian state and all its deeds. They 
tinkered liberally with the political history of all coun- 
tries, so as to produce the most favorable impression of 
the fatherland upon the rising generation. Such caustic 
critics of state and crown as the brilliant Heinrich Heine 
were taboo not only to school-children, but even to the 
teachers. And the teachers were drilled mercilessly in 
the ways of servile adherence to every least tenet of Prus- 
sianism, political, military, and religious alike. Thus it 
happened that the whole background of knowledge and 
belief which shapes virtually all of men's conduct was 
cunningly manufactured so that it would naturally imply 
or suggest loyal thoughts and loyal conduct. The same 
policy was pursued with the current information fed to 
adults through newspapers and magazines. The press 
censorship of Germany before the war was strong and 
stern. While it tolerated considerable freedom of dis- 
cussion of some topics, notably since 1900, it was ever 
alert to suppress attacks upon the fundamentals of Prus- 
sian power. True, it frequently failed in its effort to 
keep the lid on public opinion, but this was through no 
weakness of intent on the part of the ruling classes. It 
was chiefly the result of the steady infiltration of bold 
and profane ideas from France, England, Italy, and even 
Russia, all of which slowly infected the sluggish political 
minds of the kaiser's subjects. 

All of this control of education and newspapers has 
been slavishly copied by the Japanese. Every child in 
the kingdom is compelled to learn edicts, poems, and fal- 
sified history, all of which make the mikado out to be 
ordained of God, and the empire to have existed since the 
birth of time — only to mention two absurdities. Basil 



ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 65 

Hall Chamberlain, long a professor at the Imperial Uni- 
versity of Tokio, laid bare the many shams of Japanese 
text-books some years ago. In his brochure entitled 
"The Invention of a New Religion" he points out such 
interesting items as follows : 

"The first glimmer of genuine Japanese history dates from 
the fifth century after Christ, and even the accounts of what 
happened in the sixth century must be received with caution. 
Japanese scholars know this as well as we do ; it is one of the 
certain results of investigation. But the Japanese Bureau- 
cracy does not desire to have the light let in on this inconven- 
ient circumstance. ... It exacts belief in every iota of the na- 
tional historic legends. Woe to the native professor who strays 
from the path of orthodoxy! His wife and children will 
starve. . . . 

"Moral ideals which were of common knowledge derived from 
the teachings of the Chinese sages are now arbitrarily referred 
to the 'Imperial Ancestors.' ... It is officially taught that, 
from the earliest ages, perfect concord has always subsisted 
in Japan between beneficent sovereigns on the one hand and 
a grateful, loyal people on the other. Never, it is alleged, has 
Japan been soiled by the disobedience and rebellions com- 
mitted in other countries; while at the same time the Japanese 
nation, sharing to some extent in the supernatural virtues of 
its rulers, has been distinguished by high-minded chivalry 
called Bushido, unknown in inferior lands. . . . 

"The sober fact is that no nation pro})ably ever treated its 
sovereigns more cavalierly than the Japanese have done, from 
the beginning of authentic history down to within the memory 
of living man. Emperors have been deposed; Emperors have 
been assassinated; for centuries every succession to the throne 
was the signal for intrigues and sanguinary broils. . . . Em- 
perors have been exiled; some have been murdered in 
exile. . . . 



66 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

"As for BusTiido, it was unknown until a decade ago (namely 
about 1902). The very word appears in no dictionary, native 
or foreign, before the year 1900." 

Here we have a picture of the most evil Pnissianism 
transplanted to the Orient, and within the brief span of 
twenty years foisting a colossal lie upon seventy million 
people — a lie, moreover, of such a character that it must 
profoundly influence the action of those seventy million 
dupes toward all other countries of the world, if ever 
Japan comes into controversy or conflict with the latter. 

The American reader must not get the idea that such 
antiquated doctrines as these are being taught as de- 
tached items. If they were, they would not survive long. 
The truth is that they are conveyed to the young mind 
in the one surest and most convincing form, namely as 
an integral part of a whole philosophy of life and society. 
Here again we see the deep influence of Germany. 
Japan has closely followed the excellent practice of giv- 
ing each rising generation of school children an orderly 
picture of things into which the political order of Japan 
fits perfectly. As is well known, Germany adopted the 
strange, unearthly philosophies of Kant and Hegel be- 
cause they lent themselves admirably to bolstering the 
Prussian aristocrats' idea of what a perfect State would 
be. And all students were compelled to study the ab- 
surdities of German idealism and political philosophy. 
How faithfully Japan has adhered to this procedure ap- 
pears in the following ordinance of the Department of 
Education : 

"The teaching of morals must be based on the precepts of the 
Imperial Rescript of Education; its object is to foster the 



ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 67 

growth of moral ideas and sentiments, and to give the culture 
i and character necessary for men of middle or higher standing, 
and to encourage and promote the practice of virtues. The 
teaching should be done by explaining essential points of 
morals in connection with the daily life of the pupils, by means 
of good works or maxims or examples of good deeds; and be 
followed by a little more systematic exposition of the duties 
to self, to society, and to the State." 

The ideas that get into the heads of the common sol- 
diers are likewise carefully sorted and then injected. In 
a recent issue of *'Asia" we come upon one of those en- 
lightening ''Letters from a Japanese Patriot" which 
shows the educational methods of the barracks. Says 
this bold writer : 

"Only last night I met a distant relative of mine, who was 
just back from three weeks' drill for the Reserves. I asked 
him what the men were talking about in the army. 'Are they 
expecting a war with the United States?' I asked. 

"After shaking his head dubiously half a dozen times, he 
said: — 'Well, every time the officers give us lectures they 
say: "Soldiers, we have got to be prepared, for a mightier 
war is coming! The whole world is hating our glorious Em- 
pire! America hates us most of all! We cannot rely even 
on our once-tinisted ally, England! And why? Do any of 
you soldiers know? Surely, you ought to know. It is simply 
because we are so strong and great ! It is jealousy ! It is the 
same old desire of the White Race to dominate the whole 
world ! Now, then, soldiers, think ! What are you going to do 
about it?"' 

" 'Well,' I asked this distant relative soldier, 'what are you 
going to do about it?' 

" 'Really I don't know,' he said. 'But in the army, as you 
know, we've got to listen to whatever the officers say.' 



68 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

"^Sof said I. ^That was exactly the way things were 
handled in the German army. That was exactly the way the 
German soldiers went blindly to the front to be fed to the 
cannon ! 



!>" 



In fairness to the Japanese it should be added that this 
is just the sort of thing that officers are saying to Ameri- 
can sailors and marines in all the Pacific Coast bases. 

A similar account might be given, with a wealth of 
detail, about the official propaganda of Japan and the 
censorship. Every magazine and newspaper in the coun-j 
try is licensed and regularly inspected by the censorshipl 
which is more stringent than the Prussians have dared to' 
be in recent years. And the knowledge which foreigners 
acquire about Japan is shaped to a remarkable degree 
by the skilful, ingenious, and richly financed chain of 
press bureaus and societies. Indeed, most journalists 
regard Japan's peaceful propaganda in foreign lands as 
the last word in that art, exceeding even the French and 
the Americans, who like to consider themselves the clever- 
est self -advertisers on earth. 

The bulk of news coming from Japan is collected, ed- 
ited, and distributed by the Kokusai, the Japanese na- 
tional news agency, under the management of J. Russell 
Kennedy, who is also the publisher of the Japan ' ' Times 
and Mail,'' through which the Japanese Government pre- 
sents news to English-speaking residents. Every ob- 
server agrees that the Kokusai is a skilful news-colorist 
and an efficient suppressor of unpleasant facts. It is 
not such a monumental liar as the French news-fakers, 
who have been busily humbugging Americans through 
our most respectable journals ever since the armistice. 
Neither is it as malicious as the Bolshevik propaganda. 



ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 69 

Its activities seem to be more like those of our own Com- 
mittee of Public Information during the war; it sends 
out pleasant stories, hushes up gloom, and generally ad- 
vertises Japan and its Government as a set of jolly good 
fellows. In short, it follows almost the same policy as 
a. y publicity agent does in booming a movie star or a 
railroad. And we Americans, of all people on earth, 
have the least right to condemn it ; for the Kokusai has 
merely imitated our most prominent commercial adver- 
tisers in sincere admiration. 

The progressive Japanese, however, are growing more 
than restive under the system. They are saying things 
about it that are enlightening. In a recent article on 
** Stumbling Blocks to the Growth of Democracy in 
Japan," the "Asahi," a Tokio newspaper of wide influ- 
ence, bursts forth as follows: 

"The greater the misrule of the Government, the more nu- 
merous are press embargoes. The last Cabinet prohibited all 
mention in the press of the rice riots which constituted the 
largest blot on the Government's escutcheon, but the down- 
fall of the Cabinet on that issue could not be prevented. At 
the time when the present Cabinet was formed, it appeared 
that the authorities had a more proper notion of the freedom 
of speech, but during the eighteen months it has continued in 
office many mistakes have been made, and press embargoes 
have greatly increased of late. The embargoes which stand 
good at the present time number no less than 38, of which 17 
refer to Korean affairs, and these figures do not include the 
embargoes issued by the police and judicial authorities in con- 
nection with the search or exammation of criminals; they have 
all been issued by administrative offices. As to Korean af- 
fairs, almost everything is tabooed, and the Japanese are thus 
blindfolded as to the situation in Korea. It is no wonder that 



70 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Korean rule should be growing worse. The greatest defect 
of the existing Press Law is that the authorities are em- 
powered to take severe punitive measures under the abstract 
and elastic phrase 'for the disturbance of peace and order/ 
This stipulation is due to the autocratic spirit of the bu- 
reaucrats, and is irrefragably at variance with the spirit of 
constitutionalism which respects freedom of speech. It is very 
dangerous that such a stipulation should be used and abused 
by the Government at its own convenience. It may even be 
said that it is these authorities who endanger peace and order. 
The Home Minister is nominally responsible for the control 
of speech, but it is petty police officials who do the actual I 
task." \ 

Largely as the result of the world's ignorance of 
Japan, Japan's vast distance from the Western world, 
and the discouraging difficulties in the way of the Euro- 
pean or American who seeks to learn about Japan by 
reading Japanese books and papers, the foreign propa- 
ganda of that island empire has until very recently had 
things pretty much its own way in creating a favorable 
opinion of Japan throughout the white world. It is only 
since the scandalous procedures of Japan and her un- 
scrupulous allies with regard to China at the peace con- 
ference that men have begun to grow uneasy as to the 
plans and morals of official Japan, and are now listening 
to such scathing critics as Thomas F. Millard, editor of 
*' Millard's Review" (Shanghai), who for years has been 
bringing to the public attention news about the Japa- 
nese ruling classes that has been most distasteful to these 
gentlemen. To intensify this suspicion, there has been 
added since the peace conference a profound reaction 
against all forms of official publicity. Even readers 
below the average of intelligence now understand that 



ARMY AND PUBLIC OPINION 71 

their newspapers, and to a lesser degree their magazines, 
have been filled with lies foisted on the unhappy editors 
by wily press agents of foreign powers and political 
cliques. All of which has upset Japan 's publicity plans, 
along with those of many another. None the less, the 
parallel between Japan and pre-war Prussia still endures. 
And it must continue as long as Japan 's present political 
system does; for an institution founded on fictions can 
be preserved only by preserving that foundation. 



i» CHAPTER 8 
OVEKPOPULATION 

THE fifth likeness between Japan and Germany is an 
economic and geographic one. Both of these em- 
pires adjoin the largest undeveloped territory on earth ; 
namely, Russia. The significance of this will appear 
after we have considered some further similarities. 

The sixth likeness lies in the overpopulation of both 
countries. Before 1914 Germany had passed the point 
at which it was possible for her inhabitants to raise food 
for themselves in sufficient quantities. As a result of the 
enormous influx into German cities, thanks to the tremen- 
dous stimulation of manufacturing by government aid, 
the cost of food distribution, and hence of food to the con- 
sumer, was rising out of proportion to the increase in 
wages. German}^ also had on her hands a peculiar prob- 
lem of overpopulation that has never yet appeared else- 
where; she had an immense and disquieting surplus of 
highly trained professional and technical men. Twenty 
years ago this excess began to cause worry. The huge 
educational system of Germany was producing more engi- 
neers, electrical engineers, surveyors, industrial chemists, 
and other experts than the nation's employers could ab- 
sorb. The result was that the pay of such men dropped 
and dropped until, in 1910, some classes of engineers 
holding degrees from the Charlottenburg Polytechnik, 
one of the finest engineering colleges in the world, were 

72 



OVERPOPULATION 73 

getting the pay of street-ear conductors. The discontent 
of such an ''intellectual proletariat" was no slight factor 
in shaping the German program of expansion. It re- 
mains to be seen whether a similar ''intellectual 
proletariat" will arise in Japan out of her abnormal in- 
dustrial expansion. 

Already her thousands of school teachers are strug- 
gling on salaries beside which the $600 a year that our 
country schoolma'ams get is princely indeed. And un- 
less some revolutionary improvement in Japan's whole 
economic system occurs, she will soon have another army 
of pauper wise men on her hands. 

That Japan is seriously overpopulated has been ques- 
tioned by several recent investigators. But when we look 
closely into the reasons for their doubts, we see that an 
important fact has been omitted from their considera- 
tions. The Report of the California State Board of Con- 
trol on "California and the Oriental," the latest and 
most trustworthy study of the whole subject, refers to 
the findings of the Japanese Department of Agriculture 
and Commerce concerning undeveloped acreage in the 
island empire and draws conclusions that are not at all 
sound. This department, two years ago, completed a 
survey of Japanese farm-lands which brought to light 
five million acres of now unused soil which can be re- 
claimed without the introduction of any radically new 
agricultural methods. It also appeared that the Japa- 
nese, unlike the Chinese and the Filipino hill tribes, do 
not understand the development of hillsides in farming. 
They are valley folk, to whom the amazing technic of 
terracing and mountain tillage that we find among the 
Igorots of Luzon and the Chinese is a sealed book. The 



74 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

official survey reveals that simply by reclaiming and cul- 
tivating the land which is inclined at an angle of less 
than fifteen degrees Japan could double the area of her 
arable land. 

Now, it cannot be denied that this sounds as if she 
could easily spread her millions over twice their present 
area and double their food supply. But some other facts, 
all well known and beyond dispute, rob this one of its 
supposed significance and go to prove the usual assertion 
that the country is grossly over-crowded and far from 
self-supporting. These facts are a matter of geography, 
climate, and racial traits. 

In the first place, about five sixths of all Japan is wild 
mountainous country, most of which is very cold and raw 
and forever untillable. Thus the productive area, both 
actual and possible combined, represents only one square 
mile out of every six in the empire. 

In the second place, the great bulk of the still unde- 
veloped tillable land lies in Hokkaido, the northerlj^ part 
of the country, lying in the same general latitude as 
Vladivostok. This whole region is, in comparison with 
the rest of Japan, still thinly populated despite the avail- 
able acreage it contains. But this is not by accident or 
oversight. It is the natural result of a racial peculiarity 
which has manifested itself elsewhere. The Japanese 
have been for thousands of years concentrated in the 
milder southern stretches of their archipelago, where they 
have by long group inbreeding and natural selection nar- 
rowly adapted themselves to the living conditions of that 
region. As a consequence, they evince a strong dislike, 
and something of an inability, to thrive in either very 
hot or very cold climates. 



OVERPOPULATION 75 

This is not a matter of speculation. It has been clearly 
demonstrated on a grand scale during the last twenty 
years. After the opening of jManchuria, the Japanese 
Government exerted itself to direct its citizens into that 
immense territory. Although something more than a 
quarter million Japanese have emigrated thither up to 
date, the movement is generally regarded as a failure in 
the larger sense ; for it has developed that the more pro- 
gressive of these emigrants do not stay long, on account 
of the bitter winters, while those who do remain prove 
quite unable to compete with the northern Chinese there, 
largely because the latter can and do work well under 
the harsh climatic conditions of those inland continental 
plains. Prom a biological point of view this is precisely 
what one should expect. A species that has adapted it- 
self to a very equable oceanic climate for hundreds of 
generations, be this climate hot or cold, would be more 
or less upset if shifted suddenly to a highly variable cli- 
mate such as Manchuria's, where midsummer heat mounts 
to the nineties and midwinter nights drop to forty below 
zero. 

The experiment of transplanting the Japanese to a 
tropical region has likewise failed. In 1909 the Japa- 
nese Government began colonizing Formosa, but it has 
not succeeded appreciably despite the 150,000 Japanese 
who have taken up residence in that hot and depress- 
ingly humid island. It is not the climate alone, how- 
ever, which has hampered success here; the very large 
Chinese and aboriginal population has stood in the way 
of making the region a home for Japan 's surplus folk. 

In the third place, the true density of Japan's popu- 
lation is not generally appreciated. The usual method 



76 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

of figuring density is to divide the gross population by 
the gross area. Thus, Japan has about 350 people to 
the square mile. This is only a little greater density 
than Italy 's and considerably less than Belgium 's. Even 
this superficial comparison, if properly interpreted, 
would point to Japan 's grave congestion ; for Italy, with 
326 per square mile, has been overpopulated for a gen- 
eration and has sent forth immense floods of her best 
farmers and city toilers to North and South America, to 
northern Africa, and to the Near East ; and, according to 
most observers, will have to go on doing this indefinitely 
unless the Italians themselves adopt some organized form 
of birth control, which is highly improbable. And so 
with Belgium. This little land is a model of what a 
country should not be in matters of population and 
standards of living. To be sure, it has adapted itself 
ingeniously to its appalling crowds of overworked, under- 
educated, and rather sodden toilers; but, then, so have 
the Chinese. And, whatever we may think about the 
development of Belgium's agriculture in close coordina- 
tion with its industrial life, the fact remains that the 
country has more people than it can feed. And that is 
all that we are now considering. 

Now, to return to Japan's 350 people per square mile, 
this figure is misleading. We see its true nature when 
we recall that five sixths of all Japan is wild and untill- 
able. On this five sixths of the land few men live. So 
we may say roughly that Japan's total population is 
packed into about one sixth of her total area, so that 
from the point of view of density as well as of food sup- 
plies, the true or effective density of population is six 
times that indicated by the statistics. Japan is there- 



OVERPOPULATION 77 

fore actually supporting more than two thousand human 
beings to the inhabited and tillable square mile. 

In other words, the entire country has, from the point 
of view of food supplies, almost reached the condition 
which has prevailed in Shantung, which is China's most 
thickly settled province. In Shantung there are many 
farms on which, according to the first-hand observations 
of such a trained student of agriculture as F. II. King, 
author of ' ' The Farmers of Forty Centuries, ' ' one square 
mile of soil is supporting 3,072 persons, 256 cows, 256 
donkej's, and 512 pigs. 

There are about 5,500,000 families working farms in 
Japan, and these cultivate an average of a little less than 
3 acres each. This means that, in 1920, one acre has to 
feed nearly four persons. In Hokkaido, where land is 
relatively undeveloped according to the amazing Japa- 
nese standards, the acreage per family is about IVo acres. 

More than one-half of the total 15,000,000 acres is de- 
voted to raising rice. Even with such huge plantings, 
though, there are 6,000,000 Japanese who must buy their 
rice from foreign countries. This has led to the present 
new reclamation project of the Imperial Government to 
make available, within the next nine years, 250,000 cho 
of waste land — or about 6,250,000 acres. Of this total, 
which is estimated to exhaust the total acreage of possible 
farm land, only one-half or thereabouts can ever be made 
fit to grow rice, regardless of the pains taken in improv- 
ing it. 

While these efforts to increase crop acreage are going 
on, we see no less than 18,500 acres of good land being 
taken away from farmers for the construction of roads, 
railways, irrigation ditches, houses and factories. In a 



78 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

land like the United States such a tract would be negli- 
gible. In Japan it is a serious matter. 

There is another aspect of farming which must be 
stressed here, for it has a vital bearing upon the interna- 
tional crisis. According to a statement in the Japan 
Year Book by Dr. Sato, President of the Imperial Hok- 
kaido University, the tenant farmers of the country cul- 
tivate such small areas that even with their immense 
labor, they do not make enough money from their crops 
alone to keep themselves alive. They are obliged to carry 
on other work such as growing silk worms, making straw 
ware, charcoal burning, starch making, and so on; and 
in all this they have to press their wives and children 
into service. Thus we find agriculture and home indus- 
try completely interlocked and each conducted on a basis 
that would support nobody if handled alone. In this 
evil situation, be it noted in passing, lies the cause of 
the abnormally cheap production of the simpler products 
of handicraft in Japan. The parallel between this and 
the early stages of the '' industrial revolution" in Eng- 
land is obvious and significant. 

Plainly, then, Japan is much more congested than pre- 
war Germany was, or, for that matter, than any Euro- 
pean country was. Hence whatever force the density of 
population may have been in causing Germany to do what 
she did in 1914, that force must be operative in Japan, 
and probably to a much more marked degree. Before 
passing on to our next comparison, it may be worth while 
to ask when the final crisis of overpopulation is likely to 
come in Japan. We may set the year 1960 as a very 
conservative date for this crisis. We do this on the 
basis of two facts: (1) the present annual increase of 



OVERPOPULATION 79 

Japan's population is between 600,000 and 700,000, and 
(2) the reclaimable acreage within Japan will pro- 
vide, at a maximum, for feeding about thirty million 
more people at the rate of four persons to the acre. 
These facts make it theoretically possible for the country 
to provide for its natural growth by one makeshift or 
another for forty more years. It is plain, of course, that 
during those forty years many Japanese will doubtless 
leave the country, but to offset this emigration we must 
reckon with two other facts of vast importance. There 
is the strong antipathy of the natives toward life in 
Hokkaido, where the bulk of the unused soil lies; and 
there is also the conspicuous and steady rise in the 
standards of living aU over Japan, as elsewhere in the 
world. Both of these facts must powerfully hasten the 
day when the country will no longer be able to place and 
feed men on new lands within her present insular boun- 
daries. 

There is another aspect of this matter that may be en- 
lightening, and that is the economic difficulties in the way 
of utilizing the undeveloped acreage of Japan. These 
have been left wholly out of the reckoning not only by 
the California State Board of Control, but also by the 
investigators working under the Inter-Church World 
Movement in Japan. And the omission completely dis- 
torts the picture. 

Japanese agriculture long ago reached the point at 
which the law of diminishing returns began to work with 
a vengeance. As in every other part of the world, so in 
Japan, the best land was tilled first, then the next best, 
and so on, as the population grew. To-day the only un- 
used acres are far back in all but inaccessible mountain 



80 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

valleys, or they are badly drained or their soil is stub- 
bom ; so that in any case the amount of labor needed to 
bring them up to profitable cropping and to handle the 
products from field to market is enormous. Already in 
Japan the sheer volume of human effort put into many a 
field is appalling. Robertson Scott, the British journal- 
ist, who has lately completed a tour of inspection through 
the farming districts of Japan, gives us a vivid and de- 
tailed picture of the desperate and all but futile strug- 
gles of the Japanese farmers to wring a livelihood from 
the poorer lands in the northern prefectures. Writing 
in ''Asia" (from October to December, 1920), Mr. Scott 
tells of his observations in such districts as Iwate and 
Miyagi. What he tells us ought to be a warning to all 
those arm-chair statisticians and advisers who think of 
such intensely human and tremendously intricate ques- 
tions as food supply, agriculture, and population merely 
in terms of arithmetic. 

Farming conditions in most of the regions not yet 
densly populated and intensively developed are extremely 
bad, Mr. Scott finds. The east coast north of Tokio is 
chilled by a polar sea current and cursed with barren soil. 
Only one farmer in ten here ever saves any money, and in 
bad times sixty-five per cent, of the families are estimated 
to fall into debt. The wretched population exists chiefly 
upon buckwheat and millet, for rice will not grow well 
enough to warrant planting much of it. In Iwate, the 
most northerly part of Nippon, Mr. Scott reports that as 
many as forty per cent, of the people are barely making 
ends meet, while another forty per cent, are always 
dogged by poverty. Every year about seven thousand 
farmers get out and try their luck in Hokkaido, which, 



OVERPOPULATION 81 

although farther north, does have some slight advan- 
tages, such as good timber and the opportunity for ac- 
quiring larger land-holdings. ]\Iore than one thousand 
of these emigrants return annually and report failure in 
the northern island. 

Even in more favored southerly districts, where the 
climate is good, the partly undeveloped hill regions and 
the remoter valleys show how hard it is to utilize the last 
twenty-five per cent, of the theoretically tillable acreage 
in a country. Mr. Scott was informed by an agricultural 
expert in Akita, which lies on the warmer northwest 
coast, that between fifty-five and sixty per cent, of all 
farmers in that district had an annual income of about 
$150 per family; about twenty-five per cent, had about 
$75, which is the very least on which bare existence is 
possible there ; and three per cent, or more of the farm 
hands earned less than $75 a year. 

The city reader, surveying these ghastly figures, may 
be tempted to say: *'Ah, yes, this is terrible; but these 
farmers ought to cultivate more intensively. Then they 
would earn more." This is the usual advice which the 
man who does not know the difference between a hoe and 
a harrow is always ready to give the farmer. The farmer 
fortunately knows that it is nonsense. In the first place, 
intensive cultivation is expensive and always means rela- 
tively small profits, as will be shown in a later chap- 
ter of this volume. In the second place, the Japanese 
farmer in these regions is a past master in intensive cul- 
tivation and has actually doubled the acre yield of rice 
in Akita in the last thirty years, a remarkable achieve- 
ment, as any farmer must perceive. And, in the third 
place, the amount of labor and capital required to bring 



82 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the poorer acreage under cultivation is so great that there 
must always be relatively less labor and capital left out 
of the total available for the actual cultivation itself. 

The history of the rice crop and rice prices in Japan 
clearly confirms all this. In the last twenty years the 
market price of this food staple has steadily moved up 
from forty-seven cents to seven dollars per bushel. In- 
deed the price of rice in Japan is higher now than it is 
in America. Katagiri Brothers, New York importers, 
on December 24, 1920, stated that rice in Japan was then 
retailing at 16 sen a pound, which equals about $5 a 
bushel. To-day the Japanese workman pays fourteen 
times as much for his food as he paid in 1900. During 
this same period his wages, on the average, have increased 
from $6.50 to $26 per month, or fourfold. On the most 
liberal basis of computation we can allow not more than 
two hundred of the fourteen hundred per cent, increase in 
the rice cost as being due to money inflation. Thus we 
are left with an enormous margin of increase which can 
be accounted for in only three ways, either by downright 
profiteering, by a disproportionate increase in the world 
demand for rice, or finally b}^ the steadily mounting cost 
of production as a result of more intensive cultivation of 
the paddies and the expensive development of new and 
poorer acreage. We may dismiss profiteering as being 
a trifling factor except during the last two years; rice 
is grown and dealt in by too many small farmers and 
dealers to make flagrant profiteering possible outside of 
the larger cities. As for the influence of foreign demand 
upon the Japanese prices, it cannot have been very great ; 
for, when we consult the records of Japanese exports, we 
find that a minimal quantity of the staple leaves the 



OVERPOPULATION 83 

country. In 1919, for instance, with a rice crop of about 
300,000,000 bushels, Japan sent abroad about 300,000 
bushels, or a mere one thousandth of her yield. In the 
same year she imported, chiefly from French Indo-China 
and Siam, about 11,000,000 bushels. Thus it is clear that 
the domestic price of the staple is determined chiefly by 
domestic conditions, and of these latter it is pretty 
clearly the inevitable rise in production cost that has 
wrought the trouble. Too many farmers toiling on an 
acre, too many stubborn acres being coaxed to yield their 
crops! In many parts of Japan where the hillside acre- 
age is good for rice as far as the soil goes, the cost of 
bringing to it the enormous amount of water that this 
crop requires is prohibitive. To extend farming, there- 
fore, means to lower the standing of living for the 
farmer; for it involves an increase in the time spent in 
the mere struggle for food. 

"With a rising standard of tastes, is it any wonder that 
the Japanese look abroad for farms, or that they are fast 
coming to hate us Americans for what seems to them to 
be our hoggishness? Nobody can grasp the psychology, 
of the Japanese- American crisis until he has realized, the \ 
full force of the impression which America makes upon a 
Japanese peasant. The hundred thousand Japanese toil- 
ers in California see colossal stretches of empty land in 
the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, most of it so 
rich that it requires no manure or fertilizer for years to 
come. They observe thousands of small farmers who are 
both inefficient and lazy when measured by Japanese 
standards. They cannot help thinking of the millions of 
young men and women back home in Nippon who could 
build up this white man's empire faster and better than 



84 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the white man is building it, but who are barred from it 
by the white man's fear. And they know that, at the 
most conservative estimate, Japan to-day holds fully five 
million men and youths for whom war of any kind would 
mean a happier existence, better food and more of it, 
easier hours of work, and above all the first and the only 
opportunity in their lives for winning a home and a de- 
cent livelihood by some foreign conquest. When we 
think of the Japanese issue, let us not leave this stagger- 
ing fact out of our reckoning. 



CHAPTER 9 
WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 

THE seventh likeness between Japan and pre-war 
Germany is a direct consequence of over-population. 
It is the presence of enormous masses of cheap labor, and 
hence of abnormal industrial expansion. When we speak 
of cheap labor we mean relatively cheap. And by ab- 
normal industrial expansion we mean not necessarily un- 
wise or unwholesome development, but rather an ex- 
pansion which goes on more rapidly than the other in- 
terlocking economic and social processes, and which there- 
fore tends to throw everything out of gear, at least for a 
time. This disturbance, studied in retrospect, may prove 
to be merely ''growing pains." 

As for Germany, the facts about her cheap labor and 
colossal industrial expansion are so familiar that we need 
not recount them here. Enough to observe that prior to 
1910 the wages of the unskilled worker in Germany ran 
from one third to one fifth of those in the United States, 
measured in terms of the buying power of money in the 
two countries; while the skilled German was receiving 
from one half to one third as much as the skilled Yankee. 
This is a very rough comparison, of course. The wages 
differed tremendously from trade to trade, according to 
local variations in supply and demand. None the less, 
they give a fair general ratio. 

85 



86 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

How about Japan? As this matter of wages bears 
upon almost all of the political and social difficulties of 
that country, including her relations with China and the 
United States, we must consider it in some detail. 

Since 1900 the level of wages in Japan has risen from 
one to four hundred per cent. The most recent com- 
plete statistics were compiled three years ago and show 
that, despite the great advance both absolutely and in 
buying power, the Japanese are still even further be- 
low the American level than the Germans were before the 
war. We find that in 1917 the average wages in thirty- 
three occupations in Japan were thirty cents per day, 
American money. Bricklayers received sixty-one cents, 
the highest wage, while farm women drew seventeen 
cents, the lowest wage. Skilled artisans in all lines av- 
eraged forty-seven cents. Textile workers received 
twenty-eight and one half cents if men, and nineteen 
cents if women; and for this wage more than a million 
of them were working from eleven to fourteen hours a 
day. To form an idea of the buying power of these 
pitiful wages, double them and compute what the product 
would purchase three years ago in an ordinary American 
town. The result will be accurate enough for our pres- 
ent purposes. A Boston bricklayer who got $1.22 for a 
ten-hour day in 1917 would be as well off as his esteemed 
contemporary in Yokohama. A mill hand in Lawrence 
or Lowell who drew fifty-seven cents a day for an eleven- 
hour day would be able to live as high as his brother 
operator in Nagasaki. 

This situation is further made clear by this budget 
taken from the "Letters from a Japanese Patriot" which 
appeared in the issue of "Asia" for May, 1920: 



WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 87 

"For illustration, I will steal the family notebook of a school 
teacher who has a wife and two children. It is a typical 
monthly account of last winter. 

Yen 

Salary 28.00 

Bonus 6.50 

Total 34.50 

Rice 20.70 

Vegetables, fish, etc 7.22 

Fuel 2.50 

Newspaper 90 

Club fee 15 

Social expenditure, etc 1.50 

Expenses for children 1.00 

Total 33.97 



.53 

"This man lives on the school premises and pays no rent. 
He has about 53 sen (26 cents) left over every month, and out 
of these odd sen he has to buy clothes for himself and his 
family, and to set by something for emergencies. 

"Do I need to say more to explain to you why discontent is 
eating into the lives of my people f 

Let the New York City school teacher who thinks she 
is badly underpaid and down-trodden on a wage of from 
$1635 to $2160 yearly compare herself with this unfor- 
tunate man, who is no worse off than the 141,000 teachers 
in Japan with monthly earnings of $17.25, or $207 a year. 
What would she say and do if she had to spend $14 out 
of every $17 she received for food alone ? 



88 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN.'' 

Professor Takagi of Keio University attempted an in- 
quiry into the living expenses of workpeople and petty 
salary men in 1917, taking as the basis of his estimates 
these figures from earlier compilations: food 5.226 yen, 
rent 4.472, fuel 1.712, clothing 2.090 and so on. After 
making due allowances for the rise of commodities, his 
conclusions are that the living expenses are 37.46 yen a 
month. The corresponding figures for July, 1914, are 
similarly assumed by him at 25 yen. Now in Tokio the 
rise of commodities from July, 1914, to December, 1916, 
is estimated by the Government to be about 100 per cent., 
but during that interval wages in Tokio increased only 
43 per cent. 

The result of all this in the last twenty years, but most 
conspicuously since the World War began, was inevitable 
and obvious. Japanese capitalists and manufacturers 
saw in this cheap labor a glittering opportunity to un- 
derbid American and European competitors and capture 
the world's trade. This they proceeded to do with the 
same enthusiasm and the same methods which the British 
manufacturers displayed two generations ago, and the 
Germans imitated with added cunning and scientific 
technic after 1880. In this history of the world there 
has never been a shift of millions of men and money 
from farm to factory as swift or as vast as the shift in 
Japan since 1900. In 1896 there were only 434,852 fac- 
tory workers of all kinds in the country. In seven years 
this number doubled. To-day there are more than a 
million and a quarter. 

The darker devices of exploitation which not so very 
long ago prevailed in Germany and other Western in- 
dustrial states are being reproduced all over Japan. A 



WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 89 

recent study by Ken Katayama, in the January issue of 
"Asia," 1920, shows that two hundred thousand girls 
are drawn every year from farm to factory, and of this 
horde eighty thousand return home sick and shattered. 
Girls are enticed from the country and kept prisoners, 
ill fed, in rough dormitories, very much as poor whites 
and negroes used to be only a decade ago in the turpen- 
tine camps of our South. The government factories 
employ girls under fourteen years of age in many cases, 
and in the match and cotton factories mere children can 
be found. Most of them work fourteen hours a day. 

All of this closely parallels a hundred instances well 
known in the industrial history of Germany, such as the 
congestioo, underpay, and overT\'ork in Treptow, the 
great manufacturing suburb of Berlin. 

There is another and even blacker side of exploitation 
which must be recorded here. It is the exploitation not 
of the worker, but of the ultimate, consumer. Japanese 
industrialists to-day are at the same moral level that the 
British manufacturers occupied half a century ago. 
Bent solely on profits, the latter gave no heed to the in- 
jury the sale of their rum and firearms worked on for- 
eign peoples. They used to send a shipload of rum and 
guns with every box of Bibles, and used a British gun- 
boat to compel the natives to swallow both the theology 
and the liquor. So now with the Japanese manufactur- 
ers of morphia and opium. These men are mercilessly 
exploiting the Chinese, and in their vicious trade they 
are being aided by the Japanese Government. 

This has been thoroughly investigated and exposed by 
a number of authorities. Their findings have been re- 
ported in detail through official channels. We give you 



90 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

herewith a news summary of the matter that was pub- 
lished by the ''North China Daily News." The picture 
is as horrible as it is true : 

"Morphia can no longer be purchased in Europe. The seat 
of the industry has been transferred to Japan and morphia is 
now purchased by the Japanese themselves. Literally tens of 
millions of yen are transferred annually from China to Japan 
for the payment of Japanese morphia. 

"The chief agency in the distribution of morphia in China is 
the Japanese post-office. Morphia is imported by parcels post. 
No inspection of parcels in the Japanese post-offices in China 
is permitted to the Chinese Customs Service. The service is 
only allowed to know what the alleged contents are, as stated 
in the Japanese invoices. Yet morphia enters China by this 
channel by the ton. A conservative estimate would place the 
amount imported by the Japanese into China in the course of 
a year as high as eighteen tons, and there is evidence that the 
amount is steadily increasing. 

"In South China morphia is sold by Chinese peddlers, each 
of whom carries a passport certifying that he is a native of 
Formosa and therefore entitled to Japanese protection. Jap- 
anese drug stores throughout China carry large stocks of 
morphia. Japanese medicine vendors look to morphia for their 
largest profits. Wherever Japanese are predominant, tJiere the 
trade flourishes. Through Tairen, morphia circulates through- 
out Manchuria and the provinces adjoining; through Tsingtao 
morphia is distributed over Shantung province, Anhui and 
Kiangsu; while from Formosa morphia is carried with opium 
and other contraband by motor-driven fishing boats to some 
point on the mainland, from which it is distributed throughout 
the province of Fukien and the north of Kuangtung. Every- 
where it is sold by Japanese under extraterritorial protection. 

"While the morphia trade is large there is every reason to 
believe that the opium traffic, upon which the Japanese are 



WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 91 

embarking with enthusiasm, is likely to prove even more 
lucrative. In the Calcutta opium sales, Japan has become one 
of the considerable purchasers of Indian opium. She pur- 
chases for Formosa where the opium trade shows a steady 
growth, and where opium is required for the manufacture of 
morphia. Sold by the government of India, this opium is ex- 
ported under permits applied for by the Japanese Government, 
is shipped to Kobe, and from Kobe is trans-shipped to 
Tsingtao. Large profits are being made in this trade, in 
which are interested some of the leading firms of Japan. 

"It must be emphasized that this opium is not imported into 
Japan. It is trans-shipped in Kobe Harbor, from which point, 
assisted by the Japanese controlled railway to Tsinanfu, it is 
smuggled through Shantung into Shanghai and the Yangtze 
Valley. This opium is sold in Shanghai at $500 a ball, forty 
balls to the chest, a total valuation of about $20,000 a chest. 
China's failure to sell for medical purposes her opium at 
$27,000 a chest, the price asked by the opium ring, is thus ex- 
plained. The price is undercut by the Japanese. There is 
reason to believe that between January' 1 and September 30, 
1918, not less than 2000 chests of opium purchased in India, 
were imported into Tsingtao through Kobe. 

"Upon this amount the Japanese authorities levy a tax, which 
does not appear in the estimates, equivalent to Tls. 4,000 a 
chest, a total for the 2,000 chests at the present rate of ex- 
change of $10,000,000. The acquisition of the immense profit 
from a contraband traffic would explain the origin of those 
immense sums now being lavished upon the development of 
Tsingtao and the establishment there of Japanese commercial 
supremacy. 

"It may be asked how it is possible that at Tairen, where the 
morphia traffic is greatest, and at Tshintao, which is the chief 
center of the Japanese opium trade, the importation of this 
contraband continues without the knowledge of the Chinese 
Maritime Customs. At both Dalny and Tsingtao, their of- 



92 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

fiees are wholly under the control of the Japanese and wholly 
manned by them. Japanese military domination would forbid 
in both ports any interference in a traffic which the Japanese 
authorities were interested in, either officially or unofficially. 
In Dalny the highest civic dignity has been conferred upon 
the chief dealer in morphia and opium." 

Before leaving this subject, it may be well to remove 
a misapprehension as to the nature of Japan 's industrial 
and commercial expansion. Statements have frequently 
been made that lead the reader to believe that all of 
Japan's economic expansion is part of a single well or- 
dered plan to engulf China and perhaps Siberia. Such 
a notion attributes a degree of intelligence and coopera- 
tion most flattering to the Japanese but happily impos- 
sible. The plain truth is that there are hundreds of 
Japanese manufacturers and business men who can find 
work for the nation 's millions of workers only by selling 
goods abroad or else by developing industries abroad 
which cater to the basic needs of Japan. The energy of 
these people, employers and laborers alike, is precisely 
like any physical force in Nature. It tends to follow 
the line of least resistance. It presses against this obsta- 
cle and tliat, now driving to the right and now to the 
left ; and wherever things give way to it, it moves on. 

Some Japanese have lately been buying large tracts 
of plantation land in Ecuador. Others have been for 
nearly ten years in southern Brazil, where a large Japa- 
nese colony seems to have met with considerable success 
and some failures in rice growing. Others have gone to 
the Philippines, notably around the Gulf of Davao, the 
richest region in Mindanao, and are reported to be trans- 
forming the country. And now we find a new and re- 



WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 93 

markable expansion in the most densely populated 
regions of Asia, the Dutch East Indies, 

The ''Dutch East Indian Archipelago," a commercial 
journal in Java, reports the infiltration of Japanese capi- 
tal there. A Japanese company that is in the market to 
buy three large estates in Central Java is also negotiat- 
ing for the purchase of the Ngupit and Ketendan estates, 
and a site has been selected at Klaten for a new Japanese 
sugar factory. The Sumber Lawang estate of 1500 
bouws (a bouw equals 1.7537 acres) on the railway line 
between Surakarta and Samarang, has passed into Japa- 
nese hands for a consideration of Fl. 600,000, after 
changing hands in 1918 for Fl. 70,000, while the Ga- 
daren sugar estate has been bought for Fl. 1,900,000. 

The ''Economic Review," of London, states that these 
constant purchases are said to be causing some uneasiness 
in the Dutch East Indies, and people are beginning to 
clamor for preventive measures. "While the Govern- 
ment is in a position to refuse new concessions to Japa- 
nese applicants it has no power to prevent their buying 
up existing estates, even though obviously purchased for 
other than commercial reasons, as is manifestly the case 
when the estate is worthless and incapable of being made 
productive. The one infallible way of keeping Japanese 
capital out is to secure a larger investment of European 
and American capital, and unless Western capital shows 
more enterprise it must be prepared to find its Japanese 
rival gradually occupying every comer in the East." 

The eighth likeness between Japan and the pre-war 
Germany grew directly out of the whole abnormal indus- 
trial expansion in overpopulated districts. It is the sud- 



94 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

den rise of discontented workers against such exploita- 
tion, the consequent formation of labor-unions and a 
labor party, and the battle for reforms which directly or 
indirectly menace the feudalistic political order, and 
move toward a national crisis in the shaping- of which the 
ruling classes, by virtue of their having absolute control 
of army, navy, railways, and newspapers, do pretty much 
as they please at first. 

The twentj^ years preceding the World War developed 
this whole movement within Germany. The labor-un- 
ions waxed fat and strong on the grievances of the work- 
ers. As they organized with ever mounting s'kill, they 
undertook the education of their numbers in economics 
and politics and thereby accelerated the* groiwth of the 
Socialist party. The Junkers and their adherent in- 
dustrialists fought stubbornly to retain complete mastery 
of the political situation. They managed to do this at 
first by a great variety of devices, each of which was 
broken down one by one by the doughty workers. In 
desperation the feudalists took final refuge in their sys- 
tem of " rotten boroughs." Thanks to their control of 
the Prussian legislature, they had been able to win elec- 
tion after election with a minority vote'. This they ac- 
complished by so shaping the election districts in the in- 
dustrial cities where the forces of labor and Socialism 
were strong that a few wealthy voters outballoted thou- 
sands of the common people. Thus in Berlin before the 
war the fashionable residence district adjoining the 
Tiergarten, Berlin's chief park, chose one member of the 
Reichstag, while the most densely populated part of 
Treptow, the industrial suburb, did the same. In the 



WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 95 

former district a scant hundred ballots were cast, while 
the Treptow district cast many tliousand. 

The effect of such corrupt tactics was inevitable, even 
in the face of immense and shrewd resistance from the 
reactionaries. By 1910 the Socialist vote had grown to 
the point where it was clear that even under the ' ' rotten 
borough" system it would soon be voting the feudal lords 
and their hangers-on out of existence. Some observers, 
optimistically inclined, were tempted to infer from this 
that the war peril that had hung over Europe ever since 
1870 was passed. It looked to them as if a Socialist ma- 
jority, which was opposed to militarism and to war, 
would certainly block every move of the war party 
thenceforth. Other observers, though, who understood 
the psychology of the ruling classes and the overwhelm- 
ing power of centralized authority and propaganda, sus- 
pected that the kaiser would, if it came to preserving his 
holy authority and the dynasty, follow that course known 
of old to sovereigns and their advisers, the course laid 
down by Machiavelli, ''When trouble threatens at home, 
start a foreign war." We shall probably never know 
how large a part this maxim played in bringing the 
cataclysm of August, 1914, but it was certainly an active 
factor. 

So to-day in Japan. To be sure, the medieval forces 
are still in complete control of the political situation. 
To believe in Socialism is illegal, and to exploit the doc- 
trine through press or party meets tvith the reward of 
hanging. Only ten years ago Kotoke, his wife, and ten 
other followers of iCropotkin's teachings were hanged, 
and since that event nobody has seen fit to launch a So- 



96 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

cialist party or anything faintly resembling one in Japan. 
None the less the pressure from the working classes, as 
well as from the educated classes outside of the bureau- 
cracy, has steadily increased. The demand for party 
government has become more and more insistent. It 
forced the resignation of Terauchi and his cabinet in 
the summer of 1918, and then for the first time in the 
history of the empire a commoner headed the cabinet. 
After the medieval fashion, this able man, Mr. Hara, 
was promptly raised to the peerage; but not even the 
title of viscount prevented him from greatly extending 
the freedom of the press and public speech. Nor did it 
check him in his plan to broaden the electorate, which 
he did in 1919. To-day any Japanese man who pays a 
direct tax of $1.50 or more per year can qualify as a 
voter. By this act the number of voters has been in- 
creased greatly, and many foreign observers have hailed 
the Hara suffrage reform as conclusive evidence that 
democracy is sweeping Japan. 

Here, unhappily, we come upon another of those easy 
illusions created of American ignorance of far-away 
affairs. The tendency among us is to think of the situa- 
tion in terms of our own life and land; and thinking 
thus, we see at once that, if every male American adult 
who paid $1.50 a year in direct taxes were allowed to 
vote, almost everybody except the inmates of poorhouses 
and asylums would have the franchise. The poor white 
of the back mountains who pays a tax on his yellow dog 
would be admitted to the precious circle of voters. From 
which we infer that to-day most Japanese, or at any rate 
a very large number of them, are now enfranchised. 

This is incorrect. Millions of Japanese earn less than 



WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 97 

$30 a month, and millions of farm workers, most of whom 
are tenants, possess no property save the clothes on their 
backs and a few primitive farm tools. The consequence 
is that, prior to the Hara reform about 25 Japanese out 
of every 1,000 had the suffrage, while to-day, thanks to 
this ''democratic" advance, about 60 out of 1,000 enjoy 
the privilege. 

Nominally, even this low percentage makes a fairly 
good showing. It means that more than 3,000,000 men 
are privileged to vote. But in reality the bulk of this 
number is almost as negligible at the polls as our own 
Southern negroes are, and for similar reasons. They 
remain, as I have already pointed out, under the ancient 
and strict supervision of the go-no, or village superin- 
tendent, Yery much as the negroes are held in control by 
the small white rulers of the average Southern town. In 
brief, Japan now stands at the stage of political develop- 
ment which Germany occupied about tweniy-jive year^ 
ago. The dissatisfaction of the masses has forced the 
hand of the rulers to the extent of wringing from them a 
qualified suffrage. But the substance of power still re- 
mains entirely in the hands of the old leaders of the 
feudal clans, the Genro, and their coterie of manufac- 
turers and financiers, with whom are allied the mili- 
tarists. 

They exhibited their fear and hatred of democracy 
afresh on February 28, 1920, when the mikado dissolved 
the Diet because of the bitter disagreement between the 
Government and the party leaders over the issue of ex- 
tending manhood suffrage. 

Those who defended the Government in its thwarting 
of democratic forces did not hesitate to say that, in view 



98 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

of the industrial unrest and the ticklish foreign affairs 
in which the Government was embroiled, a larger elec- 
torate would imperil the nation's policies. All of which 
is precisely what the German militarists and autocrats 
were saying between 1900 and 1914, when repeated at- 
tempts were made to broaden the German franchise. 
And, again as in Germany, this contemptuous attitude 
is irritating the masses more and more and provoking 
them to strikes and other outbreaks. 

How far the new laboring classes of the cities have 
gone in the way of breaking with the traditional Jap- 
anese respect for authority and law appears in the rec- 
ords of the many strikes during the last few years. The 
latest Japan Year Book reports them to have increased 
eightfold from 1914 to 1918. Increase of wages has been 
the ruling motive in these agitations. The cases aris- 
ing from this cause have increased from 25 with 4,105 
men involved in 1914 to 340 with 59,197 participants in 
1918, and the total in five years since the outbreak of the 
War show 778 cases and 121,147 strikers. It is typical 
of the Japanese attitude towards one's superiors that 
very little complaint has been made about the manage- 
ment, and no demand for the reduction of working hours 
has ever been recorded. There were 454 strikes involv- 
ing 84,120 men that were settled by compromise. In 198 
controversies with 25,252 laborers, the latter carried their 
point. 

"Millard's Review" recently reports that: 

"Although contrary to law, labor is going into unions, and 
only a few weeks ago seven seamen's unions in Japan formed 
a general amalgamation, with membership of 20,000. The 
police have power and law to enable them to break up any 



WAGES AND EXPLOITATION 99 

union, but they are not bringing it to bear except in extreme 
cases. Even the Imperial government sees what is here; it is 
about to establish a Labor Bureau under the Ministry of Ag- 
riculture and Industry. A law that will legalize unionism 
is under consideration. It would permit only the unioniza- 
tion of the employes of one establishment — in general unions 
of even a single trade. But without sanction of law, unions 
are growing up and there are strikes. Every day brings 
notices of some labor agitation. In an iron works employing 
1200 men there was a 'go slow' in progress late in December, 
this being one way of showing respect for the letter of the 
law and at the same time getting results." 

Though the Japanese display little ill feeling toward 
their employers, they are beginning to show their teeth 
to the officers of the law. At the Ashio copper-mines, in 
the winter of 1919, more than seven thousand workers 
walked out and became so violent that, for the first time 
in the history of Japan, the local police called out the 
soldiery to help suppress disturbances. At the Hidashi 
mines other strikers tore the shoulder-straps from a po- 
liceman, an act that is, for Japan, almost as startling and 
significant as it would be in our country, let us say, for 
Mr. Gompers to slap General Pershing's face in public. 
These two instances are not at all unusual ; they may be 
paralleled all over Japan. 

All these labor troubles grow, in large measure, out of 
the country's unsound financial methods. It must 
amaze the American reader to learn that no less than 44 
per cent, of the total income of the Japanese people is 
taken for taxes. This means much more than it would 
if we were speaking of the American public, for the 
Japanese live ever so much nearer to the margin of bare 



100 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

subsistence than we do. Contrast the two lowest grades 
of workers who are important by reason of their large 
numbers. In Japan a farm hand earns $27 a year, with 
rice and sleeping quarters, or between $75 and $100 a 
year if he provides for himself. In the United States 
the poorer .farm hands earn between $600 and $800 a 
year, with food and lodgings; or, on a day's work basis, 
from $2 to $3 a day. These figures, of course, are greatly 
exceeded by those workers in more favored districts, 
such as the Great Valley of California, the trucking dis- 
tricts of Maryland and Virginia, and so on. I have per- 
sonally met many farm hands during the past years who 
were earning $4 and $5 a day during the planting and 
harvesting seasons. 

Observe, now, that a tax of 44 per cent., whether col- 
lected directly or indirectly, would leave the Japanese 
farm hand with the magnificent sum of $15.12 at the 
year's end, with which to launch upon an orgy of ex- 
travagance truly Oriental. The same burden, imposed 
upon our own horny-handed man with the hoe, leaves 
him with at least $336, and possibly $500, or more for 
buying clothes, contemplating the movies, and issuing 
souvenir postal cards. 

This comparison must not be taken too literally. It 
must be qualified by a number of technical matters too 
abstruse to mention here. The distribution of the tax 
burden, for instance, is by no means even over all classes 
of population, either in Japan or America ; so that the 44 
per cent, average cannot be strictly applied to the lower 
working classes. Still the main feature of the parallel 
is essentially accurate. The burden of indirect taxation 
lies crushingly upon the common people of Japan. 



CHAPTER 10 



RAW MATERIALS, RUSSIA, AND *'a PLACE IN THE 

sun'' 

THE ninth likeness between Japan and pre-war Ger- 
many is the lack of a domestic supply of those raw 
materials most used in modern manufacturing. Here, 
though, Japan is in a much worse plight than Germany 
ever was. Let us consider only the three most import- 
ant items, coal, iron, and cotton. Germany possessed 
considerable coal, but not enough to sustain her expand- 
ing manufacturing enterprises far into the future. 
Japan has to import virtually every ton of coal her fac- 
tories use. Germany had rich iron deposits, but again 
not in sufficient abundance for her growing world trade. 
Japan has no iron. She is seeking it in Korea and Man- 
churia, both of which have rich, but as yet slightly de- 
veloped, deposits; and she is looking toward the still 
richer fields in northern China. As for cotton, both 
countries are equally destitute. Long before the war, 
German manufacturers looked longingly to the Near 
East and the Mesopotamian Valley; if that could only 
be German territory, then the German textile industries 
might soon become self-sufficient. Japan has looked to 
Korea and also to Formosa, but with feeble hope. The 
Korean climate is unfavorable to cotton, and Formosa 
can grow much more profitable crops, such as sugar, to- 

101 



102 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

bacco, and, on the hills, the precious camphor-tree. 
China, on the other hand, entices the Japanese cotton- 
grower with many alluring potentialities. While Chinese 
cotton is inferior to the American crop, it is not seriously 
so for the bulk of the Oriental trade, and it has the im- 
mense advantages of being much closer to Japanese mills, 
hence cheaper and more speedily delivered. 

In petroleum, wool, timber, copper, zinc, nickel, and 
many other materials of the utmost importance to mod- 
ern industry Japan is similarly deficient. And each such 
deficiency figures properly in the framing of her na- 
tional policy. 

The tenth likeness between Japan and pre-war Ger- 
many is an outgrowth of the fifth likeness ; namely, both 
countries lying next to Russia and her colossal unde- 
veloped resources, and also of the nature of their other 
neighbors. Both countries adjoin, in short, two peculiar 
types of territory, the one being non-industrial and rich 
in raw materials, and the other being of a low industrial 
and political order and potentially a great market for 
manufactured goods. Thus each country finds in its 
environment beyond its political borders regions which 
can satisfy its three most urgent needs, the need of raw 
materials for its factories, the need of ready markets 
for the products of those factories, and the need of un- 
developed lands for its surplus population. 

For both Germany and Japan, Russia, including Si- 
beria, is the land of promise. Russia has room for count- 
less millions of Germans. She has room for countless 
millions of Japanese. Russia has coal, iron, copper, zinc, 
timber, cotton, wheat, and almost everything else for 
German mills and factories. Russia has all these good 



"A PLACE IN THE SUN" 103 

things for Japanese mills and factories. South of Russia, 
on Germany 's side of the world, lie the Balkans and the 
Near East, a constellation of small, backward countries 
which before 1814 were thickly populated and moderately 
prosperous on a primitive agrarian level. To the people 
of these lands German salesmen could and did go, build- 
ing up an immense trade with them in numberless lines 
of manufactured goods none of which they themselves 
produced. At the same time German manufacturers be- 
gan opening factories and buying up forests and mines 
and railways and harbor concessions, all with the view of 
changing the regions into factory towns progressively. 
To-day we note the same spectacle south of Russia, on 
Japan's side of the world. There bulks China, vaster 
than twenty Balkans, but none the less a cluster of Bal- 
kan States in very nature and waiting for just such ex- 
ploitation as the Balkans were enjoying at Germany's 
hands down to Sarajevo. Here looms the greatest of 
all the eternal triangles of trade — the triangle of raw 
material, factory, and market. Russia the raw material, 
Japan the factory, and China the market! And to-day 
the enterprising young business men of Japan are thrust- 
ing dowTi into China with their wares, while the strenu- 
ous young pioneers of Japan are working steadily west- 
ward into Siberia, under the sure protection of Japa- 
nese soldiers, precisely as the German drummer worked 
down into the Balkans and Turkey, while his lusty 
brother off the sandy Prussian farm was heading for the 
black lands of Russia or the Siberian steppes. 

The eleventh likeness between the two countries ap- 
pears in their efforts to find ''a place in the sun" and in 
the systematic thwarting of these efforts by the great 



104 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

military and naval powers of Europe. We pass no judg- 
ment here on the right or the wrong of Germany 's efforts 
to establish colonies which she might people with her own 
blood. Nor do we condemn or praise the parallel en- 
deavor of Japan. We merely report the plain historical 
fact of the attempt and the blocking of it. 

As has often been said, Germany came into the 
game of world politics too late. W^hen she began cast- 
ing about for colonies, all the good land had been taken 
by other powers, notably the British, French, Americans, 
and Russians. An early effort to turn southern Brazil 
into a German colonj^ by non-political assimilation came 
to naught. German settlers trickled into Russia and be- 
came an important element in many towns, but they built 
no colonies. All that the empire was able to get was the 
all but worthless Southwest Africa, where the Hereros 
cost them in warfare more than the whole territory will 
ever sell for; and also a somewhat better tract in East 
Africa, little of which could be inhabited by white men. 
As for the small Pacific islands the kaiser acquired, they 
were merely strategic possessions at best. 

Japan has fared a little better, but not enough to 
mar our comparison. In 1894 the island empire went 
to war with China and w^on easily. In the peace 
treaty the Japanese claimed an indemnity and the Liao- 
tung peninsula and littoral, among other things. 
Wliether this was just or unjust is not here under dis- 
cussion; we are concerned only to relate the historical 
fact again. Russia, France, and Germany protested 
vehemently, called these terms ''yellow imperialism," 
and succeeded in forcing Japan to renounce them. A 
little while after, Russia took Liaotung, saying nothing 



"A PLACE IN THE SUN" 105 

about *' imperialism " as she did so. Across the water, 
in Shantung, Germany shortly seized Kiaochiao. And 
France was soon negotiating with China for exclusive 
privileges in her southern provinces, which she got. 
Most historians incline to the belief that it was these 
hypocritical deeds which forced Japan to meet force 
with force in world politics and become a mighty mili- 
tary power. Be this as it may, there can be no doubt 
whatever that Europe's dishonest intrusion upon that 
treaty hastened Japan's resolve to make herself mistress 
of her quarter of the earth, which meant first of all an- 
nexing Korea. This was accomplished, to all practical 
ends, though not technically, in 1900, and became com- 
plete and open at the close of the Russo-Japanese War, 
though it was not until 1910 that the Emperor of Korea 
formally recognized Japanese sovereignty. 

Korea, technically, is the equivalent of a fine large 
colony that Germany might have envied. But, as a mat- 
ter of fact, it has not turned out as well as Japan had 
hoped for. After ten years of complete domination fol- 
lowing a decade of partial control, Japan has managed to 
draw to the peninsula only three hundred thousand of 
her subjects. This is less than two per cent, of the popu- 
lation of Korea to-day. Despite heavy subsidies from the 
Government, the Japanese have not taken up farms 
there. Those who have gone stick to the towns, in pro- 
found and well grounded fear of the Koreans, who to 
this day have as much love for the Japanese as the Poles 
have for the Russians. So we can reckon Korea as a 
colony only in a very limited way. 

The recent encroachments of Japan upon China do 
not have for their purpose colonization. Shantung is 



1Q6 MUST. WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

now the most densely- populated region in the world, and 
no place, for a Japanese to go except to sell goods, or be 
a clerk in the post-offices that Japan has thoughtfully set 
up there. As for the moves in Siberia, they are plainly 
being made" with the ulterior motive of acquiring some of 
that stupendous area for the human overflow. At the 
date of this writing the events there, as well as the at- 
titudes of European powers -and the United States, are 
so camouflaged by many propagandists and so frag- 
mentary that it is best not to pass judgment upon them 
here. 

The twelfth likeness is the equal determination of 
Germany in pre-war days and of Japan to-day to retain 
the allegiance of and political control over men and 
women of their ra-ces who have gone into foreign lands 
to live. 

In fairness it must be said that this attitude is not 
peculiar to these two countries. It is the general tend- 
ency throughout the world. Americans are especially 
liable to misunderstand it because our laws of citizenship 
run contrary to those of the rest of the world. We have 
a point of view on the whole matter of allegiance that can 
easily mislead us in judging the acts of other nations. 
For this reason the careful reader must survey the laws 
of citizenship and naturalization which Mr. E. T. Wil- 
liams has comprehensively summarized and interpreted 
in a later chapter. At this stage of our discussion, it 
will suffice to show how Japan always has and still does 
strive to hold to her flag and her culture every native 
and every child of a native who has gone beyond the 
boundaries of empire. You will see at once the com- 



"A PLACE IN THE SUN" 107 

plete parallel to Germany's practice, which the "World 
War brought to light in our own land. 

The Civil Code of Japan, Vol. 3, article 66, states, 
**A child is a Japanese if his or her father is a Japanese 
at the time of his or her birth." Thus every boy and 
girl born in a Japanese workman's family in Hawaii or 
California is a Japanese citizen. And the boy is legally 
bound to render military service in the mikado's army 
between his seventeenth and fortieth years. There is 
only one way in which he can avoid this duty and that is 
to renounce formally his allegiance to Japan in a regular 
form provided by the Japanese Government, and then 
wait until the Japanese Government formally accepts 
this renunciation. 

Here is a remarkable state of affairs. Elsewhere it is 
generally held that a man may simply, by his own act, 
give up allegiance to his native land; his own declara- 
tion is enough. But Japan is a jealous god. If she 
chooses to accept his expatriation, she releases him. But 
if she chooses not to, he remains a Japanese citizen all 
his life, regardless of his own washes. Nor is this all. 
According to Mr. Charles E. Martin, of the University 
of California, who has made a special investigation of 
this matter : 

"If before the age of 17, a Japanese has not expatriated him- 
self . . . the act cannot be effected until he has satisfied the 
mihtary requirements. . . . Should a Japanese (in America) 
return to Japan, he would be held for military duty and his 
American citizenship (if he enjoyed such) would not be rec- 
ognized. . . . 

"Should an expatriated Japanese return to Japan and estab- 



108 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

lish his residence there, repatriation would follow. Under the 
Japanese law, a residence of one day is sufficient to effect one's 
repatriation." 

Do you see what this means as to the status of the 
descendants of Japanese bom in the United States ? Our 
laws treat all children bom in our land as citizens. Thus 
we have in Hawaii and California to-day thousands of 
boys and girls bom of Japanese parents possessing all 
the rights and privileges of Americans. These children 
will not go to Japan in any numbers. They will remain 
here, grow up with the country, marry, have children of 
their own, and permanently establish their line here. 
If, however, their fathers did not render military service 
to Japan, or if, having rendered it, they applied for 
expatriation in vain, then all these hoys and girls horn 
171 our land must remain Japanese citizens, siihject to 
military service under the mikado; and all their children 
and their children's children^ and thus to the end of time. 

You might say, of course, that all this is a mere legal 
technicality which in practice could not amount to much. 
The children of Japanese in California will grow up in 
an American environment and absorb our ideals and cus- 
toms as swiftly as any Italian or Russian Jewish young- 
sters do; so, if ever it once came to a pinch, we should 
find them as loyal as any son of the American Revolu- 
tion. It would be well if this might happen. But the 
Japanese Government sees to it that it does not. It goes 
much further even than the kaiser's crew did in main- 
taining contact with its exiled sons and in fanning the 
flame of culture and loyalty in their breasts. 
-^ Just as Germany did, Japan helps finance private 
schools in Hawaii and California where the Japanese 



"A PLACE IN THE SUN" 109 

lan^age and culture are taught to the American-bom 
children of Nippon. And she exceeds Germany in that 
she requires all Japanese to join and pay dues to a 
native society, under the surveillance of Japanese con- 
suls, in every community where one hundred or more of 
their countrymen live. Through these organizations the 
closest check is kept upon every man, and incidentally 
a stream of information is drawn touching affairs in the 
United States. Officials of the Japanese Government 
have frequently made strenuous denial of this fact when 
it has been asserted in California newspapers; but there 
are many indisputable evidences, the best of which come 
from those Japanese who resent such surveillance. Sev- 
eral gentlemen whom I have consulted have interviewed 
such Japanese and have seen documentary proofs of it, 
and a recent case in the San Francisco police court re- 
vealed it. B. n. Yamagata, editor of a Japanese maga- 
zine in that city, there brought complaint against S. 
Malsuruma and M. Koike for having assaulted him in 
his home and threatened his life. Yamagata is also an 
officer in the Japanese Association of San Francisco, but 
apparently not friendly to the Japanese Government, for 
he recently attacked the Japanese consul-general, T. Ota, 
in his magazine and declared that ' ' we Japanese in this 
city do not propose to be ordered around by the rule of 
Tokio. We believe that the methods of the Consul Gen- 
eral are creating ill feeling in this country against the 
Japanese." Because of his opposition to surveillance, 
complainant alleged that he had been attacked and 
threatened. 

This out-Prussias Prussia. Germany, as we now 
know, did much in the way of assisting in the organiza- 



110 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tion of clubs and societies and newspapers; but never, 
even in her boldest moment, did she hope to compel 
every German-bom man in our land to join an organiza- 
tion, support it with dues, and render himself continu- 
ously liable to cross-examination and inspection by a 
German official. 



CHAPTER 11 
CLASS ETHICS AND THE SdENTIPIC BUREAUCRACY 

THE thirteenth likeness has apparently been noticed 
by nobody thus far, and yet it is clear and unques- 
tionably significant. In both Germany and Japan, down 
to their outburst of industrialism a few decades ago, there 
existed a century-old cultural system in which, true to the 
philosophy of Plato, though not consciously following 
him, scholars and riders were held in highest esteem and 
counted as the upper castes, while traders and shopkeep- 
ers were looked down upon and relegated to the lowest 
castes. In both Germany and Japan, under that older 
culture, it was thoroughly believed that the man who 
loved truth and sought, by teaching or by service in the 
state, to guide others in morality and political affairs 
was of a much higher type than the man who peddled 
fish or manufactured suspenders, even though the fish 
was fresh and the suspenders thoroughly suspensory. It 
was believed wise to rate people according to their in- 
telligence and their ethics rather than according to the 
skill they displayed in making money. 

Waive here the question as to whether that concep- 
tion of human worth is higher or lower than the economic 
conception of values which has been worked out chiefly 
by the Jews and the Anglo-Saxons. Waive also the fur- 
ther and still more difficult question as to whether the 

111 



112 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

German and Japanese grading of virtues was not inti- 
mately bound up with the state religions, or possibly 
with religiosity in general, which has become all but 
extinct in both Europe and America. Look only to the 
inevitable effect such a view produces upon the per- 
sonnel and the practices of the commercial classes. 

In the foreign trade field to-day we find the same wide- 
spread dishonesty among Japanese that was notorious 
twenty-five years ago among the Germans. The Japa- 
nese have shown little respect for patent rights and still 
less for the fulfilment of contracts and the maintenance 
of trade standards, even as the Germans did when first 
they entered upon modern industrialism and world trade. 

Such a sweeping indictment deserves a whole book of 
detail, which unfortunately cannot be written here and 
now\ The charge amazes those Americans who have met 
emd come to like Japanese students, scholars, and other 
upper-class types. You will hear such Americans say 
that the Japanese are the most honorable people in all 
the world. What they do not understand is that moral 
practices are never and nowhere a matter of a race or of 
a nation, but always of social or economic classes; and 
even within such classes they vary widely according to 
age, education, and personal rank. To talk of the morals 
of Japan is to talk unadulterated nonsense; one might 
as well talk of the morals of mankind. There simply 
isn't any such thing. There is, however, a set of cus- 
toms followed more or less generally by the ordinary 
Japanese business man and manufacturer, and it is of 
this we here speak. And hundreds of highly competent 
obser\^ers, British, American, and German, have testified 
as to the nature of such customs. 



THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 113 

It is, for instance, a well-known fact that for years 
the Japanese strained every nerve to steal the patents of 
many of the most successful American inventions. 
Twenty years ago the present writer was the unwitting 
aid to three enterprising Japanese gentlemen in ex- 
plaining a printing machine and its processes, which 
these gentlemen managed within a few years to imitate 
passably. Even earlier than that, one of our leading 
sewing-machine manufacturers found himself obliged to 
ship all his products destined for Japan with one vital 
part missing in the main consignment. His reason for 
this was that he had found the Japanese were carrying 
off his machines to Tokio and trying to duplicate them in 
the hope of stealing his patent and his trade. Needless 
to say, their duplicates did not work, much to their be- 
wilderment. It is still a common practice for the Japa- 
nese customs officials to open a consignment, remove a 
sample therefrom, and send the latter to Tokio for ''in- 
spection and appraisal." To all of this the shipper can- 
not well object, for the law so provides. But when he 
has waited a week or two for the sample to be returned 
and sees his chances of prompt delivery to his buyer go 
glimmering, and he tells the custom officials that they can 
keep the sample if they like and charge him whatever 
they see fit, so long as he gets his goods moving, he is 
told gravely that the "Japanese Government holds itself 
in honor bound to forward imported goods intact pre- 
cisely in the condition in which it has received them." 
This sounds very noble, but what it means in reality is 
that the shipment is delayed until some Japanese agent 
discovers the buyer and offers to sell him similar goods at 
a lower price, which becomes doubly attractive to the 



114 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

buyer after he has waited in vain for the promised ship- 
ment from abroad. 

A high American official, stationed for fifteen years in 
Japan and there engaged in government work which 
brought him constantly into dealings with all sorts of 
Japanese manufacturers, contractors, and tradesmen, 
told me that the dishonesty of the bulk of these people 
surpasses belief. Only the minutest supervision of their 
every move protects one against gross fraud. He made 
the further statement that the Japanese business crook 
differed from the American and European crook in one 
significant manner. The American or European would 
usually use all cunning in so phrasing a contract as to 
leave a number of convenient loopholes through which 
he might crawl out with dishonest profits. Could he not 
make such loopholes, he would enter into the agreement 
and carry it out as specified in the bond, to his own 
great credit. The Japanese crook, on the other hand, 
believes in direct action. He will sign any sort of con- 
tract in order to get business, but if he finds that he can 
make more money by breaking the contract than by fol- 
lowing it, he breaks it as blithely as he would break a 
cracker. 

Califomians have had their taste of such ethics. In 
the past season these methods have been deftly employed 
in the rice country around Willows and Marysville, 
where many expert rice paddy farmers from Nippon 
have been leasing large acreage and, down to this season, 
getting rich. Rice dropped to 31/0 cents a pound at the 
beginning of the last harvest, which was a fatal level 
when we learn that the cost of growing it was about 5 
cents a pound in this particular district. Now, it is 



THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 115 

plain enough that any farmer confronted with such a 
situation is amply justified in refusing to increase his 
losses by spending time and money in harvesting his crop 
and hauling it to market, where some speculator stands 
ready to grab it for nothing and hold it till the market 
rises. Our cotton farmers all through the South have 
been following this course, and so too have others. But 
the Japanese went further. 

They left their rice standing and moved themselves at 
top speed. With goods and chattels they decamped over 
night, whither no man knoweth. This would not have 
perturbed the good people of Willows and Marysville 
but for the fact that the departed had forgotten to pay 
up some thousands of dollars of loans which local bank- 
ers had advanced to them for the growing of rice. One 
of the banks that carried many such loans has recently 
failed, as a consequence. White Californians are now 
wondering whether all Japanese farmers, under the in- 
fluence of the American environment, are forsaking their 
old ways and imitating the low trader class. 

This crudity betrays a very primitive development of 
trade ethics that we might expect in a country where, as 
in the old Germany, the tradesman belonged to the low- 
est caste and was looked down upon by scholars and 
statesmen and the nobility. This unpleasant peculiarity 
was a mark of a class, not of the people as a whole. And 
it was almost certainly the result of the same old laws 
of natural selection and adaptation which we see every- 
where in nature, from the meanest worm up to the high- 
est social order. In Germany and Japan, under the 
old culture, men of high moral and intellectual ideals and 
attainments shunned a commercial career with as much 



116 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

loathing as every bright American boy raised under 
an economic culture avoids the ministry. The young 
men who were not stirred by religion and morals and love 
of learning stuck to trade; and, by being looked down 
upon by the upper castes, they easily fell into the habit 
of accepting upper-caste judgments themselves. The 
better people expected traders to be lowdowTi scamps. 
They treated them as such. And the traders adapted 
themselves to this attitude by being scamps. In Japan 
even to-day we still find the ancient Oriental custom of 
charging several times as much for an article as it is 
worth, and expecting the customer to ''jew one down.'* 
The quality and origin of goods are grossly misrepre- 
sented. If a trader enters into an agreement to deliver 
goods, and later finds that he has figured too closely or 
that the market has changed so that he could sell else- 
where to greater advantage, he is quite likely to repudiate 
the whole transaction flatly. In justice to the older Jap- 
anese export firms, it must be said here that such evil 
practices are followed mostly by Japanese traders who 
have recently gone into foreign trade, and are therefore 
ignorant of the commercial ethics of the Western world 
and of the extent to which world traders have been edu- 
cated up to the modern Anglo-Saxon level of trade mor- 
ality. Japanese dealers who have had years of such ex- 
perience are too sensible to try the old Japanese methods 
anywhere in the British Empire or in the United States. 
Let us now observe the way this identity of social 
ratings works at the top of the caste system. In Ger- 
many the best minds were drawn into scientific research, 
teaching, and government service ?s a consequence of the 
sincere belief that love of truth, love of righteousness, 



THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 117 

and love of the state were higher and finer than love of 
personal success and love of money. And with what 
outcome ? 

This brings us to the next parallel between Germany 
and Japan, which is one to which few Americans have 
paid due attention. 

The fourteenth likeness is in the astonishing concen- 
tration of scientists and all other technical experts in the 
service of the state. Pre-war Germany was the first case 
of this in all history, and her achievement was the logi- 
cal outcome of two forces. The old social system, with 
its praise of learning and statecraft, created the desire 
of a career of learning and politics in the. breasts of able 
men, while the gratifying of this desire was made both 
possible and easy on a large scale by the' new need of 
industrializing Germany and transforming her into a 
world power. While the sentiments of the old order 
still pulsed strongly, the builders of the new and harsher 
order utilized them to attract the intellectual classes into 
state service. Thus Germany became, in structure and 
in methods, a titanic corporation. The best brains of 
the land were selected and given posts of high responsi- 
bility. The great executives attached to themselves im- 
mense staffs of specialists and used their wisdom to the 
utmost. And the whole world to-day knows the outcome 
only too well. In 1914 German}^ was, past all dispute, 
the most powerful social organization ever fashioned in 
the flesh, and but for. the Germans' inability to under- 
stand- the workings of other men's minds, they would 
now be well on their way to rule the world. 

Now, in every detail, Japan to-day duplicates the 
best of that old German structure or else surpasses it. 



lis MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

We have shown that the entire educational system there 
is governmental. So all the experts in the university lab- 
oratories are government employees. All the railways, 
telephones, telegraphs, the tobacco business, the salt 
monopoly, the camphor industry of Formosa, and a large 
majority of the manufacturing and banking concerns 
are likewise either owned outright or decisively con- 
trolled by the Government. Hence all the thousands of 
experts in these many lines are civil servants. All this 
colossal organization centers around the mikado, from 
whom all authority derives. It is still managed by the 
old clans and their Elder Statesmen, whose model of ad- 
ministration is not the British Parliament nor the Amer- 
ican Congress, but the United States Steel Corporation 
and the Standard Oil Company. All observers, be they 
friendly or hostile to Japan, take off their hats to the 
sheer efficiency of this super-Prussian machine. Its ac- 
complishments in Korea alone are, from the point of 
view of big business, magnificent. 

Some of these, as shown in the Annual Report on Re- 
forms and Progress (1917-1918) issued by the Govern- 
ment-General of Korea, deserve a brief recital. 

In December, 1918, there were 336,872 Japanese in 
Korea, of whom 66,943 were in Seoul. Under their guid- 
ance the country and its 18,000,000 people has made 
remarkable strides. The forest resources had become 
depleted, but the Japanese have set out 473,195,976 trees 
there and are still continuing in the work. The output 
of the Korean coal mines has almost trebled since 1910. 
Korean foreign trade increased from 59,000,000 yen in 
1910 to 131,000,000 yen in 1917. The telegraph lines 
have doubled in length, and the 1910 telephone lines of 



THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 119 

320 miles have grown to more than 3,000 miles. Railway 
mileage in Korea has doubled under Japanese control. 
Banks have improved, and savings have been encouraged ; 
the latest reports show an increase of 177,687 depositors 
in a single year. Agriculture is the occupation of 80 per 
cent, o-f the Koreans, and therefore particular attention 
has been given to its improvement. Model farms, experi- 
mental stations, and training stations have been set up in 
many centers and more than a million yen is expended in 
this way annually. Improvement of cities has pro- 
gressed steadily, and Seoul is now one of the best paved 
cities of the Orient. The cotton acreage increased from 
1,123 cho in 1910 to 48,000 cho in 1917, and the Japanese 
are teaching the Korean farm-ers other practically new 
lines such as fruit trees, sugar beets, hemp, tobacco, silk 
worms, sheep breeding and the like. Improvements in 
health conditions effected by hygienic inspection, govern- 
ment hospitals and new waterworks everywhere have 
been remarkable. 

A like picture could be drafwn of Japan's labors in 
her own islands and in Formosa. And all would go to 
show that a highly centralized government, which takes 
to itself all powers and all the highly trained minds in 
sight and utilizes the best information and intelligence 
it can get, can plan, organize, and accomplish things on 
a scale and with a success which no democracy, operating 
true to form, can hope to match. The democracies fight- 
ing Germany, it will be recalled, managed to win only by 
giving up every vestige of democracy during the war. 

It is to be borne in mind, while we are on our 
main problem, that Japan, like pre-war Germany, is 
planning her national policies many, many years ahead 



120 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

with a skill and a detail unknown to the gentlemen who 
make speeches in Washington. Her rulers do not come 
and go with the leap years, as ours do. They own the 
country, furthermore, and hence are intensely interested 
in everything that occurs in it, whereas our Presidents 
and congressmen mostly possess little more than their 
official salaries, a few depreciated Liberty bonds, and pos- 
sibly a quarter-section of farm-land. Not even in the 
United States Senate do we find that intimate associa- 
tion of personal business interests and national arms that 
is normal in Japan. 

Just as Germany, immediately after defeating France 
in 1870, set out with full deliberation and the highest 
intelligence to become a world power and planned for 
the next war, which turned out to be half a century off, 
so too Japan to-day. Every move of her officials since 
she vanquished Russia in 1904 reveals the same far- 
sighted program of becoming for Asia what the United 
States is for the Americas, the overshadowing force ; and 
to-day, while our alleged statesmen are, because of our 
clumsy democratic forms of management, thinking ahead 
only as far as the next election — and thinking of a few 
scattered, disjointed pet reforms or pet bugbears — the 
Japanese aristocracy of wealth and its brother aristocracy 
of brains are pulling together in excellent team work, 
their eyes fixed on the year 1960 and afterward. What 
this means in our relations to Japan must be evident. It 
means for the future what it has meant for the past, that 
our Government will be unable to cope with the Japanese 
either by wit or by force. And we shall go on doing 
what President Wilson has been doing, not by choice, but 



THE SCIENTIFIC BUREAUCRACY 121 

by necessity, graciously ''allowing" the Japanese to work 
their will in Asia. Of this more later. It can be 
grasped only in conjunction with the next point of re- 
semblance between Japan and Germany. 



CEAPTER 12 

japan's military impregnability 

THE fifteenth likeness between these two feudalisms 
will startle all readers. It is a parallel which a few 
people have seen, but which none has bruited abroad. 
A more unpalatable fact could hardly be dished up to 
the average American, imbued as he is with the sweet 
thought that his country is the richest, the strongest, and 
the smartest on earth. But the sooner he accepts it and 
acts npon it, the faster will the chances of a ghastly and 
profitless collision between Japan and the United States 
dwindle to zero. 

The likeness is this: 

Japan to-day is impregnable against enemies from 
without, just as Germany was, and for similar reasons, 
geographical and economic. In this respect hoth coun- 
tries are like the United States and Russia. 

The reader must be warned against an easy misappre- 
hension here. It is well known that insular Japan is 
wofully lacking in natural resources, notably minerals 
and cotton, which are indispensable in modem warfare. 
And the statement has been made even by officers of the 
United States Navy that a brief blockade maintained 
between the islands of Nippon and the Asiatic mainland 
would precipitate panic and collapse throughout Japan. 

122 



JAPAN'S MILITARY IMPREGNABILITY 123 

Doubtless there was some truth in such a theory a few 
years ago, but events have moved so swiftly of late that 
it is no longer tenable. At this very moment Japan is 
a continental power greater than either Germany or 
France. And, so far as a purely defensive war is con- 
cerned, she is to-day much more powerful than any coun- 
try on earth, bar only the United States. Even Great 
Britain is, when on the defense, notably more vulnerable 
than Japan, because of her lack of adjoining continental 
territory and her perilous proximity to a potentially hos- 
tile or at least neutral mainland. Let us inspect this 
fact more closely. 

Korea is now as much a part and parcel of Japan as 
Texas is a part of our own nation. Its 82,000 square 
miles make it about the same size as Great Britain. Its 
immense coal reserves, still largely undeveloped and not 
of the highest quality, could be pressed into service in the 
event of war quite as expeditiously as were the various 
resources of Europe after 1914. So, too, with the latent 
abundance of iron and the modest supplies of copper. 
So too with the imperfectly exploited agricultural re- 
sources, which have been estimated to be capable of feed- 
ing about seven million more mouths than they now do. 
Furthermore, it would be easy for the insular Japanese 
to secure these precious supplies, inasmuch as Korea is 
completely blanketed against all attacks by sea by the 
myriad islands of Japan and the Korean coast, and 
against all attacks from the north by the immense 
mountain ranges and inhospitable plains of Manchuriar, 
which is wholly under Japan. 

As for Manchuria and its resources, let us first note 
that it is almost five times as large as Korea, very rich 



124 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

in minerals, as well as in coal, and capable of growing a 
considerable amount of wheat, barley, millet, and similar 
crops. With a population of only twelve millions, this 
vast province might be forced to yield immense supplies 
for a defensive war. If it became necessary, Japan 
could throw a million workers into the mines, forests, 
fields, and fisheries of Korea and Manchuria quite as 
easily as Germany and Great Britain did elsewhere after 
1914. Here is a continental tract adjacent to Japan 
and in all nearly six times the size of Great Britain, 
sparsely populated and naturally rich, even though 
cursed in large part with a climate which the Japanese 
dislike and do not thrive in. 

It may aid the American reader in grasping the true 
inwardness of this situation if we translate it into Amer- 
ican geography. Japan proper is a little larger than 
California. Her continental possessions, leaving Shan- 
tung entirely out of the reckoning, of course are more 
than three times the size of California and are much more 
easily developed, particularly in agriculture. Now, 
break California up into thousands of islands, scatter 
these from two to four hundred miles off shore, and then 
give her absolute dominion over our whole line of Pa- 
cific coast States and Arizona. Think now merely of a 
picture of Japan's continental power in defensive war- 
fare. Later we shall ask you to consider a similar pic- 
ture from a slightly different angle. 

Before the World War there was some slight excuse 
for doubting Japan's impregnability, although anybody 
who had made a careful study of the Boer War and the 
four-year struggle of Germany against her rebellious 
Hereros could have known it. Both of these lamentable 



JAPAN'S MILITARY IMPREGNABILITY 125 

fiascos revealed the futility of even the neatest naval 
and military powers waging war single-handed against 
even a weak enemy several thousand miles overseas. 
Look at the Boer War again. From first to last the 
Boers mustered fewer than seventy-five thousand fighting 
men. The British matched this total at the outset, and 
failed miserably to make even a dent. They then 
doubled, and fizzled again. Next they quadrupled, and 
foozled worse than ever. Not until staggered and thor- 
oughly frightened old England had hurled the 890,000th 
Tommy Atkins across the veldt at Oom Paul did the old 
gentleman shift his quid and decide that it might be 
more comfortable to go back to the farm. All of this 
merely proves the oldest of military adages, that an army 
fights on its stomach, or, as the Germans put it, "The 
soldier's bayonet reaches no farther than the cook's 
skillet." No army dares wander more than two meals' 
distance from its cooks, and rash is the cook who gets 
out of sight of his ultimate pantry. The comment of 
Germany's military experts at the time was absolutely 
correct. "If the Boers," they wrote, "had been sup- 
ported by even a fourth-rate navy, they could have 
fought the whole British Empire to a standstill. An 
army dependent for all its supplies upon a land-and- 
water rear line eight thousand miles long is beaten before 
the first shot is fired.*' 

The Germans tasted the gall of this truth only a few 
years later. A few thousand Hereros and Hottentots 
resisted the Teuton brand of imperialism in their jungles, 
and as a result more than five thousand German soldiers 
died and fifty-five million dollars was spent on a cam- 
paign which would have called for many millions more 



126 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

had not the British kindly allowed the Cape Colony police 
to come to the aid of the kaiser's discouraged cohorts. 

Americans, who at that time were babes in arms when it 
came to understanding military affairs, missed the point. 
Roosevelt, Ma^'or McClellan of New York, Colonel 
Webb, and many other citizens full of sincere patriotism 
and ignorance, often used to tell us how Japan might 
surreptitiously land a few hundred thousand troops 
in California some evening and ''have us at her mercy." 
They used to relate with bated breath how Germany 
would, some day in the not distant future, hurl her fleet 
into New York Harbor, follow it up with a nav>' of trans- 
ports, land two million Boches, and make slaves of us all, 
incidentally smashing the Monroe Doctrine into a mere 
mass of vowels and consonants. And even after the 
World War had been under way three years or longer, 
these nightmares were beautifully woven into a horrid 
texture of fiction by Cleveland Moffett and printed with 
solemn warnings from the editor in a great national 
magazine. Yet to any man capable of coherent reasoning 
the first year of the World War completely proved the ab- 
surdity of long-distance warfare under modern condi- 
tions, and the wind-up of the conflict underlined that 
same proof with blood. 

Germany, the mightiest military engine in history, was 
unable to drive into enemy country farther than two 
hundred miles from her main bases of supply. And 
France, England, and Russia, as they gathered force 
against the invader, were, with all their stupendous man 
power and natural resources, unable to drive even half 
that distance into Germany up to the very moment of 
Germany's collapse, which was brought about by our 



JAPAN'S MILITARY IMPREGNABILITY 127 

flinging into the almost balanced scales four million 
young men and the second greatest navy in the world, all 
fresh and game. And down in the Mediterranean we saw 
the magnificent British Navy, backed by the finest green 
troops ever assembled, struggle desperately around Gal- 
lipoli, month in, month out, against a relatively small 
and ridiculously under-equipped Turkish force that was 
reasonably close to its base of supplies. And we saw 
four hundred thousand of those handsome and dashing 
Anzacs die on those hot, bare slopes, while the dread- 
noughts slunk away baffled. Even if the boats had stuck 
it out and won, as they could have done in short order, 
according to later reports, the moral of the lesson would 
still have stood unaltered. 

Look closely at Japan, her power, and her position. 
It will amaze you, unless you happen to have thor- 
oughly mastered the geography and economics of Asia. 
In the strategic potency of her lands there is only one 
country elsewhere on earth at all comparable with her, 
and that is the United States, though of course the two 
lands differ enormously in their economic aspects. Old 
Japan is a vast archipelago that completely dominates 
the mainland of Asia for more than twenty-five hundred 
miles. To grasp this one fact, imagine, if you will, New- 
foundland and all the islands of our West Indies, from 
Cuba down to the tiniest of the Bahamas, scattered 
up and down the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to 
Panama. Put them from two to four hundred miles out 
at sea, sprinkle fifteen or twenty thousand reefs and 
rocks at inconvenient spots all about them, make most of 
their shores sheer cliffs, then put on them sixty million 
brisk, seafaring folk, all as good sailors as the British 



128 



MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 




Insular Japan's strategic position as represented in Atlantic 
geography. 

and Scotch and all perfectly organized under a mili- 
taristic autocracy. Then you will get half the idea, but 
only half. In fact, not quite half. 

Korea is a peninsula very much like Florida both in 
size and strategic bearings. Like Florida, it thrusts out 
in a southerly direction from the mainland. Like Flor- 
ida, it almost whoUy dominates the most important seas 
on its continental coast. As Florida dominates the Gulf 
of Mexico both at Key West and along some five hundred 
miles of coast, so does Korea dominate the Yellow Sea, 
which is the chief body of water for the commerce of 
northern China. Now, to complete our analogy, please 



JAPAN'S MILITARY IMPREGNABILITY 129 

consider that these islanders off the Atlantic coast also 
own and have militarized all of our present Southern 
States east of the Mississippi. Think of this immense 
continental tract as being the base of supplies for the 
islanders and well stocked with railroads, mines, forests, 
and developed harbors. Then you have a fair picture of 
modem Japan. 

Japan to-day combines the military power of old Ger- 
many, the naval efficiency of Great Britain and the mag- 
nificent isolation of the United States. 

This combination of advantages and powers has never 
appeared before. Not even the wildest anti-Japanese 
Jingoes have sensed all its possibilities. And yet it is 
not all. Over and above these three factors, there are 
two others that reside in the life habits of the Japanese 
people and are a tremendous asset. One of them is the 
peculiar morale of feudalism, to which we have already 
referred in another connection. The other is the low 
Japanese standard of living. 

As to the morale of feudalism, we need dwell but 
briefly on its utility in war-time. The blind allegiance 
of the German masses, even the Socialists, through the 
first two years of the World War demonstrated amply 
the hypnotic power of a small ruling class over ignorant 
millions who sincerely believed that God gave the kaiser 
his job and backed the German nation. In Japan this 
same power manifested itself, to the amazement of all 
Europe, when the mikado fought the immense armies of 
Russia to a standstill from Port Arthur to Mukden. 



CHAPTER 13 

MILITARY ADVANTAGE OF LOW STANDARD OF 
LIVING 

AS to the military advantages of the low standard of 
living in Japan, too few Americans realize how 
heavily it would count in the favor of Japan in any war 
with an European or American army. It is easy to fall 
into the error of supposing that the better a man eats and 
the better care he takes of himself, physically and men- 
tally, the tougher and stronger he is bound to be as a 
soldier in the field. People who think this also reason 
conversely that the less a man has in the way of food and 
comforts, the nearer he must be to weakness and to a col- 
lapse of morale. This double fallacy has been amusingly 
exhibited in the reports which virtually every American 
observer and newspaper correspondent has sent home 
from Russia, telling about the "impending collapse" of 
the Bolshe\dk armies. 

These reports all run to one pattern. The observer 
goes to a camp or he sees troops marching through a 
town. He notes that the "wretches" are eating black 
bread soaked in hot water that is called "soup" because 
fish has been boiled in it. He watches them chew kasha, 
or bird-seed, and wash it down with tea as pale as star- 
light. He sees their feet wrapped in tattered burlap that 
is caked black with old blood, and he shudders as he be- 
holds their filthy shirts. So, thinking in terms of back 

130 



LOW STANDARD OF LIVING 131 

home, he promptly writes to his editor that ' ' the Bolshe- 
vik forces are on the point of dissolution as a result of 
famine and misery. It is impossible for Lenine and 
Trotzsky to hold those suffering dupes in the ranks for 
another month." 

We have been hearing just such reports now for six 
years, and yet the Russian wretches seem to go on more 
serenely than ever. They do not seem to pay the slight- 
est attention to our prophets. And why? Well, the 
trouble is that our prophets do not understand either 
biology or psychology. They may be clever in dashing 
off ''human interest" stories and getting interviews with 
great men; but when it comes to understanding human 
nature or any nature, they are lost in impenetrable dark- 
ness. Apparently they have never even observed the 
striking differences of behavior between a mongrel dog 
and a well-nurtured collie of the best family. They have 
never been struck by the difference between a ragman's 
nag and a thoroughbred horse that has always had all the 
oats and grass and currying that were good for it. And, 
if they have made such observations, they have not seen 
that the same law that works in horses and dogs also 
works in men. It is the general law of the relation be- 
tween adaptation, habit, and sensitivity. Later in this 
volume we shall find occasion to scrutinize this law in 
some detail. At present we may state it roughly, in the 
form that applies to the Japanese military situation. 

The more easily am/ creature's life habits are hroken 
down, the more easily is its whole set of adjustments 
thrown out of gear. 

In general, it is the higher habit adjustments that 
break down first, and the collapse, if any, proceeds from 



132 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the highest and most recently acquired habits down to the 
lowest and earliest acquired. 

The highest of all adjustments are quickly disturbed 
by any continued interference with the lowest adjust- 
ments. Thus, all those thoughts and ideals which are 
bound up with what we call ^' morals'^ and '^ loyalty" and 
'^patriotism" are among the first to be affected m- 
juriously by upsetting food habits, sleep habits, and the 



These statements are, be it remembered, only rough 
approximations. They need considerable qualification 
before being applied generally. But they are accurate 
enough to illustrate the great advantage Japan would 
have in any war with the United States. 

What the human system can do, if trained to endure 
hardship and under-nourishment, few Americans realize. 
Let them consider an old custom among the peasants of 
the province of Pskov, in Russia, where we find a kind of 
hibernating that almost rivals the well-known achieve- 
ments of the bear. 

This custom is known as lotska, or ''winter sleep." 
When cold weather comes, the peasant family of the 
poorer sort gathers around the stove, lies down, and goes 
to sleep. Once a day everybody wakes and eats a hunk 
of bread, which has been prepared in quantity for the 
long winter siege. The bread is washed down with a 
little water, then the hibemator goes back to sleep. With 
but little variation this semi-starving is kept up for the 
six bitter, dark months, and when spring breaks, these 
gaunt but healthy muzhiks go out of doors, stretch them- 
selves, and resume work and the square meal. 



LOW STANDARD OF LIVING 133 

While this custom is not followed by the Asiatics gen- 
erally, it is none the less typical of the endurance which 
is all but universal among the Mongols and Tatars. 
Many observers have told us in copious detail about the 
fierce ruggedness of the Chinese, whose resistance to 
many forms of infection surpasses belief. And the 
meager, monotonous diet of fish, millet and rice on which 
most Asiatics thrive from birth to death is familiar to all 
of us. There can be no doubt that this represents no pe- 
culiar racial power, but rather the result of natural se- 
lection and that same high adaptability to circumstances 
which most men who survive the hardships of childhood 
possess. 

The food habits and the sleep habits of the Japanese 
are both very much more primitive than our own. The 
average American eats about 1900 pounds, dry weight, 
of food in a year ; and this in very great variety. The 
ordinary Japanese eats 900 pounds, and it is almost ex- 
clusively rice and fish. Hence, to prevent any serious 
disturbance arising from the reduction of the volume of 
food to which each human stomach is rather delicately 
adjusted, our War Department would have to deliver 
more than twice as much food as the Japanese would, 
man for man. Hence also the chances of our own men 
weakening and collapsing as a result of going hungry 
would be much greater than in the case of the Japanese. 
For going hungry and under-nourished is a hahit just as 
definitely as playing tenyiis is. It is a very intricate 
h\ody adjustment. It is established in millions of Asiatics 
and by the proeess of eliminating those who cannot ad- 
just, the surviving population of Asia has a degree of 



134 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

endurance far beyond that of the high-standard Amer- 
ican. 

So, too, with sleep habits. The ordinary Japanese 
farmer, his wife, and his children work at a pace that no 
American can match, and their sleep habits are corre- 
spondingly harsher and lower. The whole family arises 
before the sun is up, toils all day, goes home, and there 
toils well into the night. Robertson Scott, an able Eng- 
lish journalist who has been in Japan studying the farm 
life there for the past few years, gives a vivid picture of 
the peasant 's day and night in a recent issue of ' ' Asia. ' ' 
Fourteen or even sixteen hours a day the relentless drive 
in the rice-fields keeps up, and at nightfall 

"The Japanese farmer does not escape his task-master even 
when he returns home. His house is his tool-shed and often 
his store. At his door or close to it, rice is husked by being 
drawn through iron teeth, and is polished by being pounded in 
wooden mortars with wooden mallets, sometimes worked by 
foot-power and a weight. Here, also, the farmer and his fam- 
ily may winnow their barley primitively by easting it into the 
air. Round about, the giant radish and other vegetables are 
hung to dry. Indoors there may be the drjdng of the tea to 
look after, silk worms to care for, the silk of late or inferior 
cocoons to spin, or pickling of vegetables to attend to." 

They go to sleep on the floor, with a block of wood or 
a porcelain cube for a pillow. There is no heating system 
of any kind in winter, but plenty of fleas and smells in 
summer. The brief and over-polite account Scott gives 
of sleeping conditions shows the gulf between the East 
and West. 

"Next to fleas, the chief trouble in hot weather is the way 
the pohce insist that houses be closely shut up at night to 



LOW STANDARD OF LIVING 135 

avoid burglary. Since the sanitary arrangements are inside 
the house and are made in the interests of agriculture ex- 
clusively, the situation may be a bit trying. But an elementary 
acquaintance with agricultural bacteriology makes it plain that 
an unpleasant smell is not lethal." 

Now, it requires no lengthy argument to make evident 
that men v^ho have been thoroughly accustomed to sleep- 
ing on the floor in a cold room in a country vi^here the 
winters are raw and even bitter and where the summers 
are hot, smelly, and flea-bitten will be much less upset 
in health and in comfort and in morale than men who 
belong to a labor-union that forbids them to work more 
than eight hours a day ; who spend their evenings at the 
movies or, in the country, listening to the talking-ma- 
chine or to corner-grocery politics; who retire in winter 
in a room heated with a furnace and in summer screened 
against all insects; who sleep on a soft mattress under 
heavy woolen blankets and light cotton ones in season; 
and who shave and wash at a wash-stand equipped with 
running water, hot and cold. 

Here we have one of the main causes of the astonishing 
fact that the low Russian muzhiks, who have been abused 
more than any other of the European people since 1914, 
have suffered less in either health or morale. This same 
fact makes it certain that the Japanese peasant would 
outlast the average American in a prolonged contest of 
arms to the same degree that the Russians have outlasted 
the other Europeans. 

Here we come upon the great paradox of civilization. 
The very virtues and achievements of a high culture 
stand in the way of defending it in warfare against a 
low culture in so far as the war of defense becomes a war 



136 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

of endurance. We cannot discuss here the many bear- 
ings of this strange complication, but some of them will 
speedily become apparent as we inquire into the probable 
development of war between Japan and the United 
States. 



CHAPTER XIV 

WHAT WOULD WAR BETWEEN JAPAN AND THE 
UNITED STATES INVOLVE? 

We have just glanced at Japan's strategic and ma- 
terial and human assets, and have some idea of what they 
would mean to her in the event of war. 

And now for another picture, and this time one which 
millions of Americans will have no difficulty whatever 
in constructing out of recent vivid experiences. 

The main base of supplies for the United States — that 
is, the actual zone of munitions production — is the north- 
eastern quarter of our country, say north and east of 
Topeka, Kansas. It is from this region that probably 
three-quarters of all the freight for an overseas army 
would be shipped. Now, let us make a simple suppo- 
sition. Let us go back in imagination to the spring of 
1914. Let us suppose that an archduke had been mur- 
dered not in Sarajevo, but in Milwaukee, and not by a 
Bosnian, but by a Yankee who hated the Prussians. Let 
us further suppose that, for reasons of high strategy, 
the kaiser's expert advisers thought the time ripe to 
trick us into war and break down the Monroe Doctrine. 
To this end they retaliated instantly by seizing and put- 
ting to death every American then whiling in Germany 
and confiscated all their property for the delicate pur- 

137 



1S8 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 



"An unbroken chain of islands (the Kuriles, Japan 
proper, the Loochoo Archipelago, Formosa and the Pes- 
cadores) extending from Kamchatka to the Tropics com- 
pletely dominates the maritime approaches to the north- 
em provinces of China, to Korea, and to Asiatic Russia. 
The naval station of Tsuhshima commands the passage 
between Klusin and Korea, and cuts the communications 
between Port Arthur and Vladivostok. The Pescadores, 
which contain some very good harbors, control the For- 
mosa channel and the routes to Shanghai from Europe. 
The harbors and naval stations of Japan herself are 
among the finest in the world; her important seaside 
cities are situated on bays and fjords whose entrances 
can be mined and fortified ; they are so well defended by 
nature and design that in time of war almost the whole 
of the Japanese Navy could be made available for offen- 
sive operations abroad without serious anxiety for the 
safety of her homeland!" — Admiral Fletcher. 



pose of leading us to attack them on the home grounds. 
Finally, suppose that we were fools enough to do so. 
What, then? What if we did attack Germany, while all 
the other powers held their peace and watched the war, 
neutral in thought as well as in act ? 

Is there any A. E. F. private or officer, or even a 
Y. M. C. A. canteenist who has the slightest doubt as to 
the outcome of such a war? Would anybody venture 
to deny that, if we were mad enough to persist in such 
an undertaking, we would be involved in ruin so com- 
plete that even Germany 's plight to-day would seem com- 
fortable in contrast ? In an offensive war, which is much 
harder than a defensive one, the Germans deadlocked 



MANCHURIA 



Pekin 




OTonego Shima 



J_oocnoo 
Islands 



nBotel Tabago 



"Batan Islnnds 



?Lu: 



139 



140 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

four great powers in coalition against her for three years, 
and then, with her submarines, might have won, but for 
the greatest power of all coming in against her. Sup- 
pose she had stayed within her own bounds and awaited 
our coming! Suppose we had gone against her without 
an ally ! Let us draw a curtain over that vision. 

Now, all this is no idle fantasy. It has the most real, 
the most solemn significance. 

Japan is twice as far from America 's ultimate base of 
supplies as Germany is. Hence, on the most conserva- 
tive basis of estimating such matters, Japan would be 
four times as difficult to attack on her own ground as 
Germany would be. 

If it took 890,000 British soldiers to conquer 75,000 
Boers who had no navy at all, it would take at least as 
many Americans to defeat every 75,000 Japanese pro- 
tected on their own ground by a modern navy and the 
most highly organized militarism in the world. 

As Japan would easily put an army of 5,000,000 in the 
field for a defensive war, the United States would have 
to send against her eventually an army at least 66 times 
as large as the British sent against the Boers. That 
would mean an American expeditionary force of a mere 
58,740,000 men. 

In one sense, of course, such arithmetic is ludicrous. 
But it gains sober significance when considered in the 
light of the facts adduced by Japanese military authori- 
ties in their defense of the Empire's refusal to send 
troops to the French front during the World War. The 
simple evidence as to difficulties and costs of transpor- 
tation was quite enough to convince any fair critic that 
the Japanese were wholly in the right. 



WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 141 

From Yokohama to Marseilles is over 9,000 marine 
miles, by way of Suez, while from New York to Bordeaux 
is 3,187. The Japanese showed that from three to four 
times as much tonnage would be required to move their 
troops to the Western front as would be needed for 
American troops ; and that the maintenance of a line of 
supplies for such overseas troops would cost from five to 
ten times as much as the United States would be obliged 
to spend. Their estimates are based on the very con- 
servative basis of allowing" six ship tons per man to 
transport and continuously support an army. Had 
every available ship of Japan, over and above those in- 
dispensable to feeding her own people, been pressed into 
such transport service, she could not have sent and kept 
more than 100,000 troops in France. 

Now please bear in mind two things that are beyond 
all dispute: first, that the gross haulage from our own 
bases to Japanese waters is nearly as long as from Japan 
to France ; for we cannot take San Francisco but rather 
some Middle Western or Gulf Coast point as the true 
point of origin for both soldiers and supplies; and sec- 
ondly, that the American soldier eats more than twice as 
much as the Japanese and requires from three to ten 
times as much of various other supplies, such as clothing, 
as is shown in some detail in the Appendix. From this 
it follows inexorably that we should have to allow at least 
eighteen tons per man for the handling of any body of 
troops between our center of population and the Far 
East. 

On paper, we possessed on October 1, 1920, the im- 
mense array of 3,404 vessels of more than 750 deadweight 
tons, totalling 16,918,212 tons. A stupendous fleet, you 



142 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

may say with pride. But suppose every ship in it could 
be instantly put into transport service, to move and to 
feed an army anywhere west of Guam, be it the Philip- 
pines, China, Korea, or Japan. The supposition is ridic- 
ulous, I know, but let it pass for ar^ment 's sake. What 
sort of an army could we maintain at that range 1 

Precisely 939,900 men ! Not one more ! 

Of course, in realit}^, not more than one-half of that 
fleet could be diverted to such a purpose during the first 
year of a Far Eastern war. Not only do we lack officers 
and seamen and Western terminal facilities for loading 
and unloading such a horde of vessels ; but we could not 
cut off our trade with the rest of the world so abruptly, 
as we depend on merchantmen for many basic supplies. 
At the end of a year of the most strenuous and costly 
reorganization, coupled with much more shipbuilding, we 
might have the equivalent of that fleet in the Far Eastern 
service. And during this year, we should find ourselves 
confronted, so far as Japan is concerned, with a powerful 
navy operating in its home waters, behind a tremendous 
mine barrage and backed up by an army of from 3,000,- 
000 to 5,000,000 soldiers, all intrenched behind excellent 
land fortifications. 

Whoever is in doubt as to what this means is once more 
invited to put it all in the scene of a familiar debacle, 
Gallipoli. Great Britain sent her finest ships to force 
the Dardanelles. She lost 400,000 of the finest Anglo- 
Saxon troops in the vain attempt. She was able to con- 
centrate on one point. She had her whole sea way clear 
from Portsmouth to the scene of battle, with never a hos- 
tile battleship to dispute her nor anywhere a mine bar- 
rage. And she was confronted with a small Turkish 



WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 143 

force that was fairly well officered and indifferently 
equipped with defensive artillery. 

Now, put behind the trenches of Gallipoli, not a Turk- 
ish force of a few divisions but the whole Japanese army. 
Equip the forts, not with a few medium guns, but with 
the total output of the Japanese factories. And, instead 
of leaving the sea way to the Dardanelles clear, turn loose 
one of the three best navies in the world and a large mine 
laying fleet of fishing boats. And finally send our troops 
against such a foe, not by the millions, but in driblets of 
a hundred thousand or so every few months. For bear 
in mind what every A. E. F. corporal now knows, namely, 
that before an army can be managed on a foreign shore, 
you have to build whole towns and railroads and ware- 
houses to care for them and their munitions. We should 
have to erect somewhere in the Far East establishments 
not unlike those stupendous triumphs of engineering effi- 
ciency which we put up at Brest and Bordeaux. There 
is only one place where we could perform this task 
without the gravest peril of a surprise capture, or at 
least an effective blockade; and that is in the neighbor- 
hood of Manila. There we have to-day the nucleus of a 
military and naval base. 

No doubt, most Americans think of Manila as a most 
convenient point for waging war against Japan. In this 
they betray the same ignorance of geography which^ 
until very recently, has been only too familiar to all edu- 
cators and is the sure mark of provincialism. They do 
not realize that, so far as location is concerned, Manila 
is about as useful as a base for war against Japan as 
Halifax is as a base of operations against Jacksonville, 
Florida. And in other respects Manila suffers by com- 



144 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

parison with Halifax. It is more than 2,000 miles from 
Japan 's main harbors and towns, as well as from Japan 's 
bases in Korea. And between Manila and these vulner- 
able spots lies Formosa, which may be called, without 
serious exaggeration, the Gibraltar of the China Sea ; and 
beyond Formosa there strings along in a general north- 
erly direction the Luchu Islands, all Japanese, and scores 
of them ideal bases for patrols, submarines, mine layers, 
and wireless stations. The entire west coast of Formosa 
is unapproachable, a sheer stretch of cliffs above a wild 
sea that is the very heart of the typhoon area; and the 
east coast has only one important harbor, that admirably 
fortified and supported by a sizable garrison which could 
be increased tenfold in less time than the swiftest Ameri- 
can destroyer could travel from San Diego to Manila. 
While nothing definite is known as to the present magni- 
tude of the forces Japan maintains there, various observ- 
ers testify that the number must run into the tens of 
thousands, if one judges from the detachments and en- 
campments visible along the shore. 

For a considerable fraction of the year, naval opera- 
tions of a sustained character, such as a blockade, are 
quite impossible in the typhoon belt of the Western Pa- 
cific; and, as the only hope of suc'cess in a war against 
Japan would inevitably rest -upon blockade, it would 
appear that climate, as well as geography, must be a 
faithful ally of the Mikado. And it would hamper the 
Americans on land, as well as on sea ; for the wet season 
around Manila would shatter the morale of any large 
body of American troops in short order, as any old Reg- 
ular who has seen Philippine service knows only too well. 
As for the possibilities of epidemic, they are so great that 



WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 145 

it is painful to discuss them. With all our remarkable 
resources, physical and mental, for maintaining public 
health, we should be strained beyond the breaking point 
by the task of caring for half a million or more young 
men in the steam-bath temperatures of the Philippines, 
where all the diseases of the Orient, though well checked, 
still lurk in many a nook. 

All this is a gloomy picture for any militarist to con- 
template. Let us turn from it to the prosier side of such 
a hypothetical war. How about the cost? How deep 
would taxpayers have to dig into their already depleted 
pockets, to foot the bills of such a mad enterprise? Ob- 
viously such a general question has no answer. Every- 
thing depends upon how long the citizens would tolerate 
a war. They probably would not endure it ten minutes, 
in their present mood. But, for argument's sake, we 
may conceive that, at some not infinitely distant date, 
they might be persuaded to let matters run along their 
bloody grooves for a year or two, just as the blind British 
did with the Boers in South Africa. What would one 
year of such a policy cost us? 

Considering the immense distances involved, we are 
safe in saying that the expenses per man would be at 
least three times as heavy as those incurred recently in 
France. Now, our Treasury Department announced last 
December that the net cost of the World War to our 
Government (excluding all foreign loan advances and 
other items not exclusively military or naval) totalled 
$24,010,000,000. While technically the period covered 
by this outla}^ extended from April 6, 1917, down to 
June 30, 1920, it may be truly taken to represent roughly 
two years of actual warfare and demobilization. Thus 



146 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

we may set the cost of a year of war at something like 
twelve billions. The fact that, if we went to war again 
within a few years, a good deal of the equipment and 
buildings bought in the late war could be used over need 
not be considered ; for we assume, as everybody must, 
that we shall have no new war of first magnitude for a 
good many years to come. 

But this is not all. In a war which we waged alone, 
we should have to reckon entirely upon our own ships, 
both war vessels and merchantmen. We should have no 
British armada and "lime juicers" to convoy our trans- 
ports and fight for us while we were getting ready. In 
the briefest possible time we should have to deflect the 
greatest possible number of our freight boats to the war 
service. And this would result in a tremendous reduc- 
tion of our highly profitable foreign trade. It is im- 
possible to estimate how much of this commerce would 
slip away from us ; but it is worth nothing that our gross 
overseas business for the year ending June 30, 1920, 
reached the dizzy peak of $13,349,661,000 ; and of this 
argosy American bottoms carried $5,071,905,981, — or a 
shade better than $-44 out of every $100 handled in and 
out of our ports. It would be safe, I dare say, to assume 
that we should lose at least one-third of this whole for- 
eign trade as a result of the Government's withdrawing 
our merchantmen from commerce and requisitioning mu- 
nitions for war purposes. We should then have the exact 
reverse of the situation precipitated by the W^orld War, 
namely, the heaviest of bans upon outbound shipments 
and a premium upon certain imports needed for war; 
with the result that both our farmers and our manufac- 
turers would suffer severely. Counting in the deprecia- 



WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 147 

tion on our ships during a year of war and other second- 
ary items, we would find ourselves out of pocket to the 
tune of fifteen billions or more at the end of the first 
twelvemonth of hostilities. 

The military history of the Boer War, the Herero re- 
bellion in German Southwest Africa, the Russo-Japanese 
War, our own campaign in the Philippines, the Gallipoli 
expedition, and the World War in general all prove un- 
mistakably one great fact; they prove that no war car- 
ried on at long range can get under way in much less, 
than a year and requires at the very least another year 
or two to reach some decision. The sheer volume of 
organization is staggering, and the jamming and lost mo- 
tion involved in every immense emergency enterprise 
managed by hundreds of men new to the job and raw 
in their outlook and policies can never be forestalled 
appreciably. Army and Navy officers with whom I have 
discussed the matter are convinced, from their recent 
experiences, that a Far Eastern war, once seriously 
undertaken, would have to run on for at least three years 
in order to get definite military results. That would 
mean a new war debt of something like forty or fifty 
billions for us to carry. 

Lieutenant-General Kojiro Sato of the Japanese army 
has recently written for the "Hochi," a Tokio news- 
paper, articles in which he seriously anticipates the 
power that the United States could bring to bear in a 
possible war against Japan. 

"I do not think that America can summon up the courage 
to disregard these obstacles and think of sending an expedition 
to a country so far removed from her as Japan. . . . 

"When America's program of naval extension is com- 



148 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

pleted, she will have 40 old and new battleships, 37 cruisers, 
258 torpedo-destroyers, more than 300 submarines, and 5000 
seaplanes. America's army will be 300,000 strong and mean- 
while 650,000 young men of military age are in training every 
year. Looking at the American preparedness as indicated, one 
is apt to come to the conclusion that Japan is no match for 
America in point of military strength. . . . 

"Although the Japanese navy is inferior to the American, 
America w^ould find it an impossibility to land her troops in 
any part of the Japanese territory as long as there exists the 
Japanese Na\y. Even if America possessed the greatest na\y 
in the world she would not think of conquering Japan. As 
long as there remains the last man in this land ready to lay 
down his life for his country, the American Navy, however 
strong, would have little chance of possessing any part of 
Japan." 

Lieutenant-General Sato has omitted many steps in his 
wholly sound reasoning. Let us attempt to supply them. 
We shall find that this high military officer and expert 
has politely concealed a host of harsh facts. 

To-day the American battle fleet is more than twice as 
powerful as the Japanese. We have 369 vessels of all 
classes now in service and 223 under construction, making 
a total of 592. But the Japanese have four battle cruis- 
ers in commission and four more under way, while we 
have none at all ready for service, but are building six. 
As these are the most potent of all modem ty^es, they 
must be reckoned as partly outweighing the numerical 
advantage of our huge fleet of destroyers and submarines, 
which constitute more than one third of our nSLvy. 

There are, however, three facts of prime importance 
that nullify this physical superiority of our fleet. The 
first is our great distance from Japan and the strategic 



WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 149 

weakness of our line of supply between San Francisco 
and Manila. The second is the division of our fleet into 
two parts, which are more than five thousand miles re- 
moved from each other, one in the Pacific and the other 
in the Atlantic. And the third is the appalling shortage 
of trained personnel on all our vessels, which is so grave 
that, according to naval authorities who were interviewed 
by the Chicago ''Tribune" recently, it would consume at 
least a year to make the fleet fit to fight even if it were 
reunited in a single body and fully officered and manned. 
This opinion has been subscribed to by several naval of- 
ficers whom I consulted at San Francisco and San Diego. 
Some of them asserted that, in its desperate efforts to 
keep the boats intact, the recruiting officers were now re- 
fraining from too close scrutiny of the age and the origin 
of would-be sailors, with the result that fourteen-year-old 
boys in considerable numbers may now be found aboard 
our battleships. One very intelligent quartermaster 
added that it seemed fairly easy to secure recruits for 
the Atlantic fleet, but very hard to hold them on the 
Pacific side, where desertions were frequent. And a 
lieutenant at San Diego said that the bo^^s lately re- 
cruited were so green and reckless that he was afraid 
to turn in whenever his vessel put to sea for manoeuvers. 
Our experiences in the Spanish- American War revealed 
the peril of a fleet divided between the Atlantic and Pa- 
cific. And the World War showed beyond dispute the 
enormous advantage accruing to the fleet that fights a 
defensive war in its home waters, backed up by shore 
batteries and hidden behind its o\^^l mines. We may, in 
the light of all this, assert that, even if our fleet were, 
on paper, four times as powerful as Japan's, it probably 



150 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

would not vanquish the latter in Japanese waters, which 
could be converted into an impassable mine-field in less 
time than we could man and fit and unite our vessels 
and build up a safe supply-line. 

To grasp the difficulty of naval operations in the Far 
East look at a map of the Western Pacific as it was re- 
drawn by the Peace Conference. In part payment for 
her services to the Allies, Japan has been put in posses- 
sion of Germany's islands of Micronesia, north of the 
equator, namely the Carolines, the Marshall and the 
Marian groups. The Marshall Islands have harbors that 
easily accommodate the largest warships. And this brute 
fact of Nature neutralizes the clause in the provisions 
laid do^Ti by the League of Nations according to which 
Japan, as mandatory over these islands, is forbidden to 
fortify them or use them as a naval base. Whenever 
Japan wishes to use them, all she has to do is sail in and 
drop anchor. 

Now, these islands lie between the United States and 
the Philippines, not in a strict geographical sense, to be 
sure, but strategically. An American ship plying be- 
tween Manila and San Francisco would, in war time, be 
exposed to attack for an unbroken stretch of a full thou- 
sand miles. To conceive what this means, let any Ameri- 
can soldier or sailor who crossed the North Atlantic dur- 
ing the World War imagine that ocean to be nearly 
double its present width; then let there be strung along 
the last thousand miles of the stretch a hundred or more 
islands, south of the steamers' track; and finally let a 
hundred or more German battleships and submarines and 
supply boats be lurking in the harbors of those islands. 



WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 151 

Nor is this all. Directly north of the Philippines lies 
Formosa, now a part of Japan. Here is a highly devel- 
oped naval base from which a battleship fleet can steam 
to Manila in considerably less than forty-eight hours. 
The best approach to Manila from the United States is 
around the north of Luzon, over the very waters of the 
Formosa naval base zone. It would be the simplest 
thing in the world for the Japanese to mine all the north- 
erly approaches of our archipelago weeks before our fleet 
of transports arrived. 

The British, French, and Italian navies combined were 
unable to hold in check the German submarines, when 
Germany was driven off the high seas. What could the 
American navy do in overcoming the Japanese subma- 
rines, when the whole of Japan itself is on the high seas 
and its outposts scattered so widely? 7s it to he won- 
dered at that all naval experts who have spoken on this^ 
matter agree that, from the military point of view alone, 
the United States could not prevent Japan from conquer- 
ing the Philippines? 

Here let me cite the highest possible authorities in 
defense of the position I have taken. On January 15, 
1920, the Submarine Defense Association published a 
more or less technical report on the record of subma- 
rines during the world war. This society, I may say, is 
composed chiefly of Navy officers, shipbuilders, and 
other men professionally engaged in naval affairs. They 
are all convinced that it is folly to go on building battle- 
ships. Here are their reasons : 

"The war was won on land. At sea, the submarine had 
proved itself potentially supreme. In the last week of hostiU- 



152 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ties the Germans, who had concentrated on tankers, sank nine. 
If Germany had had 1,000 U-boats in August, 1914, nothing 
could have saved Britain and the Allies. 

"As it was, she had only thirty-six U-boats at first and usu- 
ally only eight or nine were in use at any one time. On the 
average, each U-boat sunk cost the Allies $100,000,000 in loss 
and expenditure, a total for the war of $20,000,000,000. Civ- 
ilization cannot stand such casualty. In years to come sub- 
marines will have a wider range of activity. When small, they 
will be hydroplanes almost able to fly. When large, improved 
engines will enable them to remain submerged for indefinite 
periods. Whatever headway was made against submarines 
was largely because they had to rise to the surface. If this 
necessity be reduced, the submarines will become to that extent 
more formidable. In four and one-half years of intensive ef- 
fort, with at least 600 destroyers besides other naval units, 
and 6,000 patrol and searching vessels, only 205 submarines 
were sunk or captured. In the Irish Sea alone 2,500 vessels 
were on patrol, yet they could not guarantee safety when the 
armistice was signed. 

"Building big battleships is sheer waste of money. Ten 
years after the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac 
navies were constructing obsolete ships, and so will it be with 
dreadnoughts. No great army can be carried across the ocean 
against a fleet of submarines. Against attack, Australia and 
New Zealand are absolutely secure. Given enough submarines, 
the United States is now a distinct and impregnable military 
unit, and so is the Old World. If war breaks out again, it will 
be fought on land behind a ring fence. In my judgment, 
the United States and Britain should face the facts and save 
their money. The future is serious enough without the waste 
of resources on useless varieties of armaments." 

It v^ould be idle to add a word to this tremendous 
demonstration of the impregnability of any and all coun- 



WHAT WOULD WAR INVOLVE? 153 

tries which are remote and have some submarine de- 
fenses. It is worth while, though, to state that the facts 
above adduced were largely responsible for the remark- 
able change of policy in Great Britain with regard to the 
building of battleships. 

All this need not terrify us in this Japanese crisis. 
For happily, the converse of this predicament is equally 
true. Japan could not wage a successful war with the 
United States on our own ground. To attack the Cali- 
fornia coast with the idea of landing and holding it would 
require fifty times as many men and fifty times as much 
material as Japan would need for taking all Eastern Si- 
beria, which is immeasurably more valuable to her than 
our whole Pacific coast. 

Shortly after the armistice, our own War Department 
authorized the publication of statements by our War Col- 
lege experts which all drove unmistakably toward this 
essential conclusion. They criticized the previous esti- 
mates of forces needed by Japan for effecting a landing 
in California and there carrying on offensive warfare. 
Those old estimates, which had been paraded for years 
by jingo journalists and impish imperialists, set the 
figure at something like half a million men. All the 
technical studies of the World War, according to our mil- 
itary specialists, showed that that figure is far below the 
mark. In view of our immense military and naval ex- 
pansion since 1917, all thought of invasion has become 
imbecile. Probably the five strongest foreign powers 
acting in perfect accord could not successfully assault us 
to-day, and nobody knows this better than the Japanese 
military leaders. 



CHAPTER 15 
THE GREAT DEADLOCK 

THE greatest piece of luck that could befall the world 
would be to have the militaristic clique of Japan be- 
come so inflated over its power and its "honor" that it 
declared war against the United States, seized the Philip- 
pines and Hawaii, and made a demonstration against our 
Pacific coast, some time during the next few years. 
Such a move could have only one outcome. It would 
sound the death-knell of Prussianism in Asia. 

It would instantly shatter the British-Japanese Alli- 
ance; for Great Britain could not tolerate the Japanese 
in the Philippines, as that would mean the ruin of the 
British naval base at Hongkong and the complete blan- 
keting of China, whose entire coast would then be abso- 
lutely at the mercy of her one dangerous enemy. It 
would also mean a most ominous southward extension of 
Japanese power in the direction of Australia, the land 
most coveted of all by the Japanese. But, worst of all, 
the British Empire would be confronted with the painful 
necessity of choosing between her Asiatic ally and the one 
non-British nation which speaks the English language 
and is destined, by geography, by climate, and by natu- 
ral resources, to become the permanent center of the 
white man's civilization. No American and no English- 
man doubts that the people of Great Britain would hesi- 

154 



THE GREAT DEADLOCK 155 

tate a moment in casting their lot unreservedly with the 
United States, cost what it might. 

For similar reasons Japanese aggression would start 
uprisings in China which would drive every merchant, 
trader, and hireling of Nippon out of the land. Or, fail- 
ing that, they would compel the Mikado to place a huge 
army in China, which would require many ships for 
transportation and maintenance of supplies. Japan 
would not be able to maintain for long a war in China 
and a naval war against the two mightiest fleets on earth. 

There is the further possibility, and one not remote, 
that the Russians might take a hand in the contest as a 
matter of self-interest ; and even a slight exertion on their 
part would count heavily against the Japanese. The 
hatred of Japanese imperialism in Russia is as fierce as 
it is in China, perhaps even fiercer, in view of the gross 
seizures, illegal occupations, and repeated brutalities of 
the Japanese troops in Siberia, which were so bad that 
even our State Department uttered a few coherent and 
verbally powerful peeps of protest against them, while 
the working-men's unions of Eastern Siberia have sent 
appeals to the world for help against the Huns of the 
East. 

Unfortunately, however, the strategists of Tokio know 
all this, and much more accurately than anybody else 
does. This is why acute observers, notably the Chinese, 
have been saying openly that the diplomatic pressure of 
the Japanese Foreign Office for a prompt adjustment of 
the California crisis can lead nowhere. It is, they de- 
clare, merely a move to *'save the face" of the Govern- 
ment, just as our own State Department 's protest against 
the Japanese occupation of Sakhalin was. Every gov- 



156 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ernment is committed to certain policies which cannot be 
maintained in practice. Each finds it more comfortable 
to go on talking- as if talk could be backed up with deeds. 
It saves one the trouble of working out a new policy. 

It is this extraordinary military deadlock that explains 
a number of things which have mystified editors and stu- 
dents of Oriental affairs. It explains the pronounced 
forbearance of the Japanese Government in the face of 
the harsh discriminatory land law just approved by the 
California referendum. It explains the marked restraint 
that same Government has maintained in the presence 
of local boycotts against Japanese farmers and store- 
keepers here and there in California and the occasional 
expulsion of Japanese settlers from a few rural districts, 
usually under the leadership of the local American Le- 
gion. Up to the date of this present writing (January 
10, 1921) the Japanese Government has exerted itself 
scrupulously to hold in check the anti-American demon- 
strations that have been breaking out in Tokio and else- 
where, and it has confined its own official efforts to filing 
polite protestations with our State Department and ask- 
ing that '' something be done about it." We are still in 
the stage of diplomatic amenities. 

This is not at all after the manner of that same Japan 
which made ruinous demands of China only a few years 
ago and less than six months ago defended its ''honor" 
valiantly at Nikolaievsk, of w^hich more later. But even 
more puzzling is the Japanese Government's determina- 
tion to keep secret the new arrangements which it must 
make with us over the California crisis. In this latest 
situation we find the clearest proof of the almost ludi- 



THE GREAT DEADLOCK 157 

croiis predicament of both the Japanese and the Ameri- 
can militarists. We must inspect it closely. 

Since the November elections, Baron Shidehara, Japa- 
nese ambassador to the United States, has been conferring 
with our State Department over a revision of the old 
''Gentlemen's Agreement" that was drawn up by Root 
and Takahira. What the new agreement will be nobody 
is to know, unless matters reach a fresh crisis. Among 
diplomatic circles in Washington it is pretty generally 
believed that our State Department will make public 
little or nothing about the terms of the readjustment. 
As the correspondent of the New York "Times" puts it: 

^'The impression prevails here (in Washington) that the 
terms of the gentlemen's agreement will not be disclosed unless 
at some time in the future this Government believes they have 
been violated. How this secret understanding will accord with 
the principle laid down in the covenant of the League of Na- 
tions of removing the veil of secrecy from all concluded ar- 
rangements between governments is not explained, but the un- 
derstanding is that out of a delicate sense of consideration for 
the sensibilities of Japan there will be no publicity." 

Now all this piques the curiosity of a political realist. 
What, to be quite precise, is the ''delicate sense of con- 
sideration" which our own State Department possesses? 
Nobody noticed it when the State Department was deal- 
ing with Haiti recently. Nobody noticed it in the State 
Department's singular callousness toward China and its 
recent weakness in maintaining the traditional American 
policy in Siberia when the Japanese took over the north- 
ern half of Sakhalin. Nor has anybody noticed it in 
the various moves of the State Department in Mexico. 



158 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

How does it happen that Japan should be the only nation 
in the world toward which our statesmen display lady- 
like manners? It cannot be accident. It must be de- 
sign. Particularly so when we take into consideration 
that the great original foe of secret diplomacy and cham- 
pion of ''open covenants openly arrived at" happens to 
be the President of the United States. Particularly so, 
we may add, when we also take into consideration the 
fact, challenged by nobody, that the Japanese Govern- 
ment is a stem political realist and has never been known 
to display delicate consideration toward Korea, Siberia^ 
China, or anybody else save the United States. Consider, 
as one of a hundred equally striking instances, the Niko- 
laievsk affair. This illustrates both the political realism 
of Japan and the ''delicate sense of consideration" which 
the Japanese Government displayed toward our own 
State Department. 

In the obscure Russian town of Nikolaievsk ill feeling 
developed between the inhabitants and a Japanese garri- 
son which had been stationed there under the pretext of 
keeping order and guarding against the eastward march 
of the wicked, wicked Bolsheviki. Some assert that the 
ill feeling was deliberately nursed by the Japanese ; oth- 
ers deny this. But the point is of trifling importance. 
Rowdyism, then street fighting, began. Soldiers came in 
and opened fire. When it was all over, some six hundred 
soldiers and civilians lay dead. Whereupon Japan 
poured in troops, and within two months had officially 
announced the taking over of the northern half of Sak- 
halin in order to uphold the honor and prestige of the 
empire whose brave soldiers had been ruthlessly slain 
by the Nikolaievskians. 



THE GREAT DEADLOCK 159 

Commenting upon this happy outcome, General Sato, 
of the Japanese General Staff, said : 

"But I should like them (the civil officials) to remember how 
precious human blood is. The blood of only two men secured 
the lease of Kiaoehau and the blood of only thirty-seven men 
was enough to give Britain the ascendency in Shanghai. We 
do not mean to make the most of the blood of 600 people who 
came to a miserable end at Nikolaievsk, but something must be 
done that the spirits of those victims may go to rest." 

This mild glossing over of imperialistic plans by a 
reference of piety is unworthy of a general, who should 
be a complete realist. Straight to the point and with 
complete and admirable honesty drives a great Japanese 
daily paper, the ''Yorodzu." It declares: 

"Many of our countrymen are always fearful of what other 
powers may say. . . . Britain is now so fully occupied with 
Irish and Central Eastern problems that she can scarcely turn 
her attention elsewhere. America is engrossed in the Presi- 
dential election and the Mexican problem. . . . Britain, which 
already owns the greater part of the world, is enlarging her 
territory more and more, and America is endeavoring to place 
under her administration Mexico. ... It is at this juncture 
that the great massacre at Nicolaievsk has taken place. . . . 
Unless Japan takes action, it is to be feared that there is no 
hope for economic existence. No nation has ever failed to take 
important action in the face of a serious massacre." 

How clearly the editor saw the world situation ! And 
how events confirmed him! Our Department of State 
sent a hast.y note to the Japanese Government about the 
occupation of Sakhalin. This move, said we officially, 
was contrary to our wishes. We wished Japan would re- 



160 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

spect these wishes and withdraw. To which Japan re- 
plied, with all the graciousness of diplomacy, that it had 
the highest regard for our wishes and hoped to go hand 
in hand with us down the corridors of time, but none 
the less it was going to stay in Sakhalin. To this we 
made no official reply. But on September 16 following, 
our State Department said that Japan had construed our 
silence as consent. 

Of course our own Republican politicians were on hand 
with their own interpretation of this rebuff. It was plain, 
they said, that Wilson was playing into the hands of the 
Japanese. Listen to the burning words of George W. 
Hinman, a well-known Chicago newspaper man, who was 
editor-in-chief of the Republican campaign of 1920. On 
September 13, at a luncheon given by the Republican 
National Committee in Chicago, he said : 

"The Wilson administration has built up Japan to be the 
greatest power in the Far East. 

"This in the face of the fact that Jefferson pointed the way 
to a very different national policy as to the Pacific Ocean, which 
was followed consistently down through a long line of his suc- 
cessors until the present day. . . . 

"We have seen the 'gentlemen's agreement' broken and the 
*open door' closed. 

"They went overseas and gave to Japan islands in the Pa- 
cific which brought that empire 2,000 miles closer to the Pan- 
ama Canal. 

"They have given away to Japan the peninsula of Shantung, 
with its 46,000,000 of Cliinese, the most disgraceful — the only 
disgraceful thing in our diplomatic history. The Wilson ad- 
ministration has yielded everything to Japan from the day of 
Secretary of State Bryan down." 



THE GREAT DEADLOCK 161 

It is quite possible that Mr. Hinman believes half of 
what he here says. But the editor of the "Yorodzu" 
believes less of it. Nor can any other human being ex- 
cept a politician accept more than the closing statement, 
which is plausible, but hardly true, for by the terms of 
the treaty, what is given to Japan is the Bay of Kiaochau 
and the town of Tsing-tao on its shores with certain eco- 
nomic privileges in Shantung. True enough, the Wilson 
administration has yielded everything to Japan; but so 
would any other administration. So will the next Re- 
publican administration in so far as Asiatic issues are 
concerned. And for the best of all reasons. 

So surely as Japan cannot back up her wishes on this 
side of the Pacific with force, just so surely can the 
United States make no similar move on the other side of 
the Pacific. Japan knows the futility of landing troops 
in California. Our War and Navy Departments know 
the futility of landing troops in Sakhalin, to oust the 
eJapanese from Russia. Here we come upon the one sim- 
ple explanation of the lamentable breakdown of our once 
glorious "open-door" policy in China; our shrewd inac- 
tion with regard to Japan's irresistible invasion and ab- 
sorption of Korea, whose last death-throes we are now 
hearing; our failure to back up the Chinese Delegation 
at the peace conference in the face of outrageous demands 
pushed and achieved by the astute Elder Statesmen ; and 
our recent pointless letter-writing about our Asiatic pol- 
icy, so suavely ignored and later misinterpreted by Tokio. 
Here, too, we have an equally complete and rational ex- 
planation of Japan 's headlong conquests on the mainland 
of Asia, her ruthless demands upon China during the 



162 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

"World War, and then her genteel paper protests to Wash- 
ington against the California land law, followed by her 
efforts to keep all negotiations and the new "Gentle- 
men's Agreement" secret. 

It must now be pretty plain what that "delicate sense 
of consideration" is which our State Department is dis- 
playing toward Japan in the revision of the "Gentle- 
men's Agreement." The Japanese Government has for 
the last ten years been working day and night to gain 
full recognition as a world power. Its military and 
naval expansion has been a part of this effort. So, too, 
has been its insistence, sometimes almost childish, upon 
its own "national honor," concerning which it has 
plainly taken its cue from the old German militarists and 
their imitators in other lands. This has made an im- 
pression upon the Japanese people much deeper than it 
could upon any Western European stock. They are po- 
litically immature, precisely as the German people were, 
only more so. They lean heavily upon their ruling 
classes, as we have seen. They believe the mikado to be 
God's agent, all-wise and all-powerful. Now, the army 
and navy still dominate in the Government, and their 
backers in the newspapers are powerful and noisy. Fur- 
thermore there is the tremendous need of an outlet for 
Japan's overcrowded millions, and the most natural thing 
in the world is to expect the Government to find that out- 
let. The Government has been trying to find it, in Korea, 
in Formosa, in China, in Siberia, in Mexico, in California, 
and even in South America and Australia. And it has 
been quite consistent for the Government to insist strictly 
upon the rights of its nationals to go wherever the citizens 
of other countries go. Only the narrowest slave of race 



THE GREAT DEADLOCK 163 

prejudice can find fault with this attitude ; certainly any- 
other attitude would be humiliating and injurious to hira 
who took it. Nevertheless, it cannot be maintained either 
by argument or by force in the case of California. This 
State has a perfect right constitutionally to pass any land 
law it sees fit to, and our State Department cannot inter- 
fere with power. At most it can beseech California not 
to put thorns in the way of diplomats, and the Japanese 
diplomats are well aware of this fact. They know that 
they cannot politely threaten war. They know that such 
a threat would only provoke a polite smile from our own 
State Department. For, although our State Department 
is not a marvel of intelligence, it does know that Japan 
has scarcely a better chance of forcing our hand with a 
show of troops and battle-ships than Montenegro has, 
and for the reasons we have set forth above. 

The plain truth is that the Japanese Government is 
in a most painful dilemma. If it stands consistently 
upon its avowed rights and its resolve to win the full 
rights of emigration and citizenship which it has repeat- 
edly assured its own people it would do, it will inevitably 
expose its own incompetence to secure those rights ; and 
such an exposure would certainly precipitate a grave 
political crisis in Japan. If, on the other hand, it ac- 
cepts the fact that it cannot force the hand of California, 
still less of the United States, not even by military ag- 
gression, it will then consistently acquiesce in discrimi- 
natory legislation against its subjects on our Pacific 
coast ; and this will infuriate the ardent nationalists and 
the jingoes of Japan and perhaps lead to the overthrow 
of the present Government. Its one easy way out is to 
conceal this dilemma from its own people. And, as luck 



164 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

will have it, our own State Department can readily be 
persuaded to do its share in this covenant of silence ; for 
it finds itself in precisely the same sort of a dilemma with 
regard to its Asiatic policy. Our old and beloved ' * open- 
door" policy in China and our hazy fervor for self-de- 
termination (except in those cases where we want to do 
somebody's determining for him, as in Mexico and Haiti) 
have both become, so far as Asia is concerned, idle rhet- 
oric, and for the best of all reasons, namely, our phy- 
sical inability to practice what we preach. Our foreign 
trade interests are eager to see the "open-door" policy 
maintained in China, and powerful financial interests 
are equally anxious to have a door now closed pried open 
— the door to Siberia. 

The two greatest opportunities of fortune left in the 
whole world to-day are found in the industrializing of 
China and the exploitation of the natural resources of 
Siberia. Japan has a little free capital and a prodigious 
labor supply with which to grasp these two opportunities. 
The United States has a deluge 9f dollars ready to pour 
into both countries the minute it can feel safe in doing so. 
No third nation on earth ranks with either Japan or our- 
selves in inclination or ability to grow rich in those vast 
regions. The hunger of our own foreign investors has 
been comically exhibited of late by three more or less 
related events: the reorganization of the China con- 
sortium, under the lead of Mr, Thomas W. Lamont, of 
J. P. Morgan & Co., and its offer of loans to the Chinese 
Government before the latter had expressed any desire 
of borrowing; the strange adventures of one W. D. Van- 
derlip, representing a group of prominent California 
capitalists, in getting from the soviet government a 



THE GREAT DEADLOCK 165 

sixty-year lease on no fewer than 400,000 square miles of 
northeastern Siberia, and an unbelievable contract to 
deliver American manufactured goods to Lenine and 
Trotzky in exchange for minerals, furs, grain and tim- 
ber ; and the noble fury which is being vented upon this 
magnificent commercial adventurer by the American ex- 
ploiters who have cast their lot with the French and are 
hoping to gain these very same leases and contracts some 
fine day after the Bolsheviki have been overthrown and 
the old reactionaries backed by France have returned to 
power. 

However hotly these various American groups may 
hate one another, they are of one mind when it comes to 
pressing our State Department to clear the path for them 
in Asia. And the politest way of accomplishing this 
would be through an appeal to the '' open-door" policy 
and the inviolable sovereignty of Siberia. But our un- 
fortunate State Department knows only too poignantly 
that it is powerless to force Japan out of Siberia or Shan- 
tung. And the Japanese know it, too. Were the United 
States to make even a faint gesture of force in its nego- 
tiations over Japan 's Asiatic program, it would instantly 
consolidate the entire Japanese citizenry behind the mili- 
tarists. It would confirm all the wildest allegations of 
the Japanese jingoes about our crass imperialism and 
our resolve to ruin Japan and starve her people for the 
sake of American capitalists. It would set back liberal- 
ism in Japan a whole generation and would speed up the 
expansion of the empire on the continent. The effect in 
America would probably be quite as disconcerting, for it 
is hard to doubt that the temper of our own people is 
fiercely set against foreign quarrels of the magnitude that 



166 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

leads to more Liberty loans, more Red Cross drives, more 
conscription, more excess profits taxes, more Government 
management, and more press censorship. A statesman 
who entered upon a program of intimidation, be it of 
Japan or any other nation, which promised to lead in 
the direction of another war and billions more of debt, 
would be promptly exterminated, politically if not other- 
wise. Our State Department knows this, and so, too, 
does the Japanese Government. 



CHAPTER 16 
HOW LONG CAN THE DEADLOCK COI'TINUE'? 

NOBODY who has watched international events dur- 
ing the past years can believe that the deadlock 
which we have just been describing can continue indefi- 
nitely. There are too many potent forces at work to 
break it down, and, even if there were not, the shifting of 
populations, business, and world finance would certainly 
bring about the same result by mere chance sooner or 
later. Some of these forces, human and physical, are 
already conspicuous enough, and we must consider them 
at once if for no other purpose than to forestall a possible 
misunderstanding of our previous remarks. The reader 
may slip into the optimistic mood as he notes the present 
obstacles to war. He may suppose that no war between 
Japan and the United States can ever develop. 

We should like to share this pleasant conviction, but 
nothing that has been said above warrants such a fine 
faith. It must be emphasized that the situation in the 
winter of 1920-21 makes war within the next few years 
virtually impossible between the two countries, but that 
the conditions which are responsible for this deadlock are 
decidedly volatile. Some morning we may awake to find 
them gone into thin air. 

As I have already said, events are shifting like ripples 
in a river, and no man can pretend to foresee more than 

167 



168 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

a few general tendencies in the whole situation. Who, 
for instance, had the remotest anticipation, in November, 
1920, that Baron Hayashi might be slightly mistaken 
when he declared perhaps within ten or twenty years 
China might win a place in the Council of the League of 
Nations and there rank with Japan? Outwardly there 
was every indication that the Japanese representative at 
Geneva was correct. And yet, in less than thirty days 
after his utterance, Wellington Koo had committed the 
Assembly to the policy of choosing one non-permanent 
member of the Council from a state outside of Europe 
and the Americas. Within a week after this skilful 
manoeuvre, this young Chinese statesman had won votes 
enough to put his country on the Council. The signifi- 
cance of this victory lies in the fact that a unanimous 
vote is required for all measures in Council. Thus it has 
become impossible, at least during the next year, for 
Japan to commit the League to any policy which China 
regards as injurious to her own interests. 

Now, nobody knows what reactions this may set up in 
Japan. But we may reasonably guess that both the bu- 
reaucrats and the militarists are thoroughly aroused over 
it. They see many of their well laid plans for the peace- 
ful penetration of China halted, if not wrecked. And, to 
make matters worse, in the very same week they see the 
United States protesting with full force against the 
League of Nations turning over to Japan the German 
cable station on the island of Yap in the Pacific. This 
protest has raised squarely the issue as to whether the 
League or powerful outsiders are going to shape world 
policy hereafter. And one may well believe that, if the 
League loses in this dispute, the Japanese bureaucrats 



THE DEADLOCK 169 

and militarists may strive to follow the lead of Argentine 
and drop out of an enterprise which offers them scant 
hope of profit. 

Episodes like these two may conceivably tempt the 
ruling- classes in Japan to imitate the Prussian war party 
and take its chances on a ''now or never" policy. In 
1914 the Prussian clique saw its power slipping from it. 
The rising power of the Socialists at home and the eco- 
nomic and social advance of France and England prom- 
ised to end, within a few more years, the old Prussian 
dominance of Continental affairs. Delay meant certain 
ruin. The desperate stroke offered at least a fighfing 
chance of victory. They took the chance. And, as every 
close student of diplomacy and military technique knows 
to-day, they lost merely because of a few serious miscal- 
culations in social psychology. If some powerful Japa- 
nese militarists can convince their associates that they 
can avoid such blunders, it might happen that a "now or 
never" war might break out in Eastern Asia on a mo- 
ment's notice. 

Immense forces of money and public sentiment thwart 
such a mad program and reduce it to little more than a 
bare possibility, so- far as the next few years are con- 
cerned. But the aspect changes profoundly when we 
look further into the future. There, so far as we can 
now observe, the situation is reversed. Immense forces 
of money and public sentiment may then encourage 
Japan in the ways of aggressive militarism. To cite 
again only the two chief factors, Japan's economic de- 
pendence upon the United States, especially as to cotton 
and iron, and the anti-militaristic sentiment in the 
United States. Each of these restraining influences may 



170 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

fade away in five or ten years. To show that this is not 
a mere fear, look at a few facts. 

Every politician and business man in Japan is painfully 
alive to that country's commercial and military weakness 
in raw materials; and public opinion, so far as there is 
any, backs up every official move that looks forward to 
making Japan self-sufficient. This is the strongest sin- 
gle power behind the almost feverish development of the 
agricultural and mineral resources of Korea and Man- 
churia. This is the motive dominant in Japanese capi- 
talists' highly successful extension into the coal and iron 
districts of China. Developments already under way on 
the continent of Asia may be expected to emancipate 
Japan from both the British and the American coal and 
iron trade within a decade, especially if the Japanese 
are aided by immmise hlochs of American capital in 
developing the natural resources and the railroads of 
China. 

So too, somewhat later, with the development of cotton 
in Korea and China. The former country, while poorly 
suited to extensive cotton-growing, can be made to help 
out. The agricultural experts state that native cotton, 
while quite poor, is none the less better than all other 
grades of Oriental fiber and is in good demand for the 
manufacture of wadding (used largely in winter cloth- 
ing). The experiment station at Mokpo has for years 
been testing out an American upland cotton and finds 
that it thrives fairly well in the southern extremity of 
the peninsula, where both the acreage planted and the 
yield have been increasing rapidly, the market gross 
value having crossed $2,000,000. As for China, she sent 
in 1919 no less than $38,249,886 worth of cotton to Japan, 



THE DEADLOCK 171 

all low grade fiber, to be sure, and yet significant as a 
promise of what may be accomplished once railways and 
money spread southward in that mighty empire. It is 
generally held that China's potential cotton yield can vie 
with India's; and if this is correct, we may be sure that 
the Japanese textile industry will neglect nothing that 
speeds the day when, if need be, Japan can leave both 
America and India out of the reckoning in placing her 
cotton orders. It is not to be expected, of course, that 
China will ever produce high quality cotton comparable 
to even our' own Southern middlings ; on the other hand, 
such a quality is not absolutely necessary for the Oriental 
trade, which is geared to very inferior textiles and 
padded clothes. Still less is high-grade cotton needed 
for war purposes. In the manufacture of explosives the 
poorest short staple is precisely as good as the finest long 
staple. So far, therefore, as military eventualities are 
concerned, China might deliver her worst enemy from 
foreign cotton monopolies by increasing her own yield 
fivefold or sixfold. And within a decade, given the cap- 
ital, she can go far toward that goal. 

We ought not to overlook the possibility that Siberia 
may before long contribute not a little to the economic 
independence of Japan from India and America by a 
revival of her limitless wool business. Wool is little 
used in the Orient for clothing, chiefly because of its 
relatively high cost. But in the event of war, cost is 
the last of all things to be taken into account. The one 
thing that counts is the existence of the desired goods 
and the ability to deliver them where they are wanted 
in time. Thus viewed, Siberian wool would certainly 
be drawn upon heavily by Japan at a pinch. And it 



172 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

would greatly reduce the amount of cotton to be im- 
ported. 

Here is not the place for an exhaustive analysis of ways 
and means whereby Japan may free herself from our 
double control of her raw materials. We can say, how- 
ever, that such an analysis would warrant- the statement 
that as soon as Chinese railroads and mines and similar 
enterprises are even moderately financed, Japan will no 
longer have to deal with us in coal, iron and cotton. She 
may prefer to in times of peace, but if peace ends of a 
sudden, she can dispense with us. And that date may 
prove to be as early as 1930. It is hardly conceivable 
that the vast financial plans of the new China consortium 
will be long delayed, nor that their execution will fail to 
benefit Japan first of all in the manner mentioned. 

So, speaking not at all in prophecy, but simply by way 
of showing the clear direction of the strongest forces now 
at work in the Orient, we may conclude that in ten years 
or thereabouts the Japanese people will have partly 
broken the deadlock which now makes it impossible for 
them to wage war upon us. 

And how about the change in anti-war sentiment in 
America during this same crucial decade? Here all 
speculation is idle. Public opinion is a tricky and evas- 
ive creature in any democracy, so many and so subtle are 
the forces that drive it hither and yon. The safest con- 
jecture is a. very timid one ; we may suppose, at the very 
least, that the usual aftermath of a great war will tend 
to recur between now and 1930 ; namely, a slow f orget- 
fulness of the horrors of war and their unprofitableness 
and a steady tendency to gild the past, to draw in mem- 
ory a picture of those terribly glorious days, and to thrill 



THE DEADLOCK 173 

when the Fourth of July orator vocalizes over Chateau- 
Thierry. Add to this the very real prospect of stupen- 
dous commercial and financial expansion of American in- 
terests in both China and the Philippines, as well as in 
Siberia, before 1930, and you will doubtless be inclined 
to admit that the perils of a severe clash between Japan 
and ourselves will grow rather than dwindle. 

Few of us as yet comprehend the unparalleled 
magnitude and power of the organized capital in our 
country which is seeking investment in China and Si- 
beria. Few of us even know that since the armistice 
Americans have loaned no less than $8,000,000,000 to 
Europe, much of it on terms which, according to the 
best opinion, make mere '^brokers' commissions" look 
petty. They wish no better luck than, to make an equal 
loan to China and Siberia during the next few decades, 
for they know that the probable profits in those money- 
poor, earth-rich empires must be. dazzling, even as our 
most conservative bankers, notably Mr. Thomas W. La- 
mont, have declared them*to be. Now, it stands to reason 
that you cannot send thousands of American engineers 
and salesmen and bankers into the same rich region into 
which thousands of Japanese' engineers and salesmen and 
bankers are pouring, all for the same good reason, with- 
out multiplying the sources of conflict, friction, and open 
hostility. Not all the fine speeches at bankers' dinners 
or missionary gatherings will ever change that elemental 
fact of human nature, and the sooner we frankly recog- 
nize it and, instead of trying to shoo it away with fine 
words, adjust our lives to it, the better' for all mankind. 
We Americans may easily become pugnacious again, for- 
get old war debts, and allow ourselves to be led into an- 



174 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

other foreign war after we have become deeply involved 
in the fortunes of Asia. This outcome is not inevitable. 
It is merely possible. To forestall it, the world must 
resort to methods hitherto unused by diplomats. 

The era during which Japan will progressively eman- 
cipate herself from foreign- markets, at least on the im- 
port side, will certainly continue for the next thirty or 
forty years, precisely as it did in the CEise of Germany, 
though with a very different outcome. Before this 
emancipation has been completed, a few factors will 
enter into the situation and modify it profoundly. It 
will be the real crisis of overpopulation. If we assume 
no* radical change either in- government or in policy dur- 
ing this time, Japan will have, by 1930, at least 8,000,000 
more mouths to feed than to-day; by 1940, probably 
17,000,000 more than now; and by 1950, fully 25,000,000. 
Being already incapable, of supporting her population on 
domestic products and being dangerously dependent upon 
foreign lands to pay her workers' wages by buying their 
manufactured articles, Japan will then be in a desperate 
predicament. 

To make matters worse, this predicament may come to 
a head in the same decade when the first wide-spread ef- 
fects of the great new health and hygiene movement in 
China mature. Since the war both missionary societies 
and public health workers have redoubled their zeal in 
saving Chinese babies and cleaning up Chinese towns. 
The records of the Red Cross workers in the treaty ports 
show that substantial progress is there being made in this 
direction and the recent action of the Rockefeller Foun- 
dation in appropriating no less than $20,000,000 to the 
same end must work an almost revolutionary change dur- 



THE DEADLOCK 175 

ing the next thirty years. By the end of that period 
we may confidently expect to see Shanghai, Hongkong, 
Canton, Peking and Hankow transformed as whole- 
somely as Havana and Colon and Guayaquil have been 
under American auspices. All of which is, of itself, very 
good and much to be commended; but, when considered 
in conjunction wdth the growth of population in Japan 
and the industrializing of China, it takes on a very dif- 
ferent color. 

With China's population then beginning to increase, 
and with her workers growing more and more indepen- 
dent of the outside world for food and clothing, China 
will assuredly develop a stronger national spirit; and 
there will be less room and probably a colder welcome 
for Japanese workingmen wherever the Chinese are. 

As for Siberia, there seems to be a true dilemma there 
for the Japanese. If the old czarist party or any of its 
near relatives returns to power in the next few years, it 
will be powerfully bound to France and French invest- 
ors, who have billions invested in Siberia and have toiled 
relentlessly and unscrupulously for the restoration of 
that group to political power. It seems likely that, with 
such an outcome, the interests of France will be opposed 
to Japanese expansion in eastern Siberia ; for the French, 
who have suffered appalling financial losses in Russia 
since the downfall of Kerensky, will demand and expect 
all the first fruits of the "restored" Siberia. On the 
other hand, should the soviet regime maintain itself in- 
definitely, we may safely assume that it will continue as 
hostile to the military autocracy of Japan and its eco- 
nomic imperialism as it has thus far been. 

All of which is cited as mere probability, with a view to 



176 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

bringing out the third and most ticklish stage in Amer- 
ica's future relations with Japan. If, and when, this 
stage is reached, the factor of man power will not be a 
deterrent in willing a war, be it on China or against 
Russia, be it in the United States or in the Philippines. 
On the contrary, the surplus man power will become of 
itself the one adequate cause of war. In China to-day 
millions are dying of starvation and the Government does 
little or nothing about it. But we may be sure that if 
the day ever comes when a few thousand Japanese are 
menaced by the hunger that kills, the Japanese Govern- 
ment will stop at nothing to better their lot. Whatever 
the evils of feudalism may be, it has its finer side, which 
shines forth in a sincere desire to secure at least the sim- 
pler needs of all loyal subjects. Every Western trav- 
eler in Japan has been impressed with the kindly and in- 
telligent energy of the mikado's officials in improving 
the lot of even the lowliest peasants. That energy, we 
may be sure, will not abate as the pressure of population 
and increased economic independence both become more 
pronounced. 

To sum up, then, there are three fairly distinct phases 
in the probable evolution of Japanese-American rela- 
tions, assuming, as we have been doing for the sake of 
argument, that international relations and international 
business are allowed to drift pretty much as they now 
are. We shall have, first, a brief span of five or ten 
years of deadlock in which neither country will be 
able to launch upon any war with the other. A gest- 
ure of war may be made, and it is even conceivable 
that a mere skirmish might be indulged in under ex- 
traordinary circumstances of diplomatic blundering, 



THE DEADLOCK 177 

but this is too remote to be seriously entertained. The 
second phase will cover the latter part of the dead- 
lock and the ensuing decade or two, and will in all prob- 
ability be a time of major agreements and commercial- 
financial pacts, marred slightly by minor conflicts of in- 
terest in China and Siberia, possibly, too, in the Philip- 
pines. During this time Japan will be progessively at- 
taining economic independence and strengthening her 
hold upon the natural resources of China. The third 
phase will begin when this emancipation is virtually com- 
plete and the increase of population in Japan has be- 
come unendurable. When this last phase is reached, 
war will become almost certain, assuming that America 
steadily increases her economic interests in China and 
Siberia, and also assuming, as we have been doing, that 
Japan will pursue her present policy of using her politi- 
cal power to extend her economic interests and then in- 
cluding all new territory contributing to those interests 
under her political sway. 



CHAPTER 17 
WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT? 

IN view of this possible course of events, what can we 
do? And what should we do? 

One thing seems pretty clear. Whatever we do to pre- 
vent a serious breach must be done in the next five years 
or so. After that time things will get out of hand. So 
long as war is virtually impossible, we may discuss the 
crisis with extreme frankness and strive for a reasonable 
solution, but the minute either party feels sure that a 
blow might be struck and a victory won, open debate 
grows increasingly difficult and futile, precisely as it did 
in Europe between the Bosnian affair of 1908 and the 
invasion of Belgium. When the powder is wet, nobody 
hesitates to touch off a match in the neighborhood of the 
powder-magazine. But when it is dry ! 

It is, of course, conceivable that we might try forcing 
a sane readjustment by non-militant forces. Thus we 
might say to Japan : * * Your course in Shantung and in 
northern Sakhalin is a menace to world peace. Unless 
you abandon it and make due amends, we, the people of 
the United States, will, on a certain date, place an em- 
bargo upon all goods consigned to your country, the same 
to continue as long as you hold to your present conti- 
nental policies." Such an act would probably bring an 
appalling panic, political and financial, in the island em- 
pire. For, remember, Japan depends upon us for half 

178 



WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT? 179 

of her cotton and for many other manufacturing essen- 
tials and we buy most of her export silk. To lose at one 
stroke several vital raw materials and her best customer 
would shatter her already unstable industrial system, 
which is now suffering acutely from over-expansion and 
unemployment. 

But what would be accomplished by such a move on 
our part? It is more than doubtful whether it would 
force the hand of a race as proud and as full of self- 
justification as the Japanese. We may feel quite certain 
that it would only act as a threat of armed force would. 
It would unify the nation against us. The Government 
would capitalize the sufferings, real and imaginary, 
which our embargo promised to cause; and in the end 
we should find ourselves better hated and more com- 
pletely ignored than ever in northeastern Asia. 

Nor would the effects at home be pleasanter. Our 
manufacturers and exporters would oppose such a quix- 
otic venture, which deprived them of half a billion dol- 
lars of business for the sake of a political ideal. As 
for the ordinary citizen, he would have no interest in 
the whole affair, but he would savagely resent being 
dragged into another international rumpus. He is sick 
of rumpuses. He wants peace and quiet, no matter what 
happens to the babies of Armenia or the starvelings of 
central Europe or the muzhiks of Nikolaievsk. We may 
therefore conclude that, in the present state of Ameri- 
can opinion, neither war nor economic pressure can be 
brought to bear upon Japan in the interest of the "open 
door" or Siberian sovereignty. 

The same must be said of the ingenious ''ration- 
ing" plan recently advanced by Mr. Carlyon Bellairs, 



180 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

formerly a commander in the British Navy and now a 
Member of Parliament. Mr. Bellairs has given much 
thought to the obstacles that lie in the way of universal 
disarmament. He realizes, as most men do after a close 
study of the matter, that Japan is the pivot of the 
whole movement. If she comes in, Great Britain and 
America will have no difficulty in joining. If she re- 
fuses, there is not the slightest hope save through some 
skilful coercion. Mr. Bellairs has therefore recom- 
mended that, in such an event. Great Britain and the 
United States ought to curtail their supply of steel to 
Japan strictly to the amount needed for peaceful indus- 
trial purposes. 

This view has been put forward by others and has met 
with more or less journalistic approval. It was brilliant 
in 1910. Today it is absurd. In 1910 the Japanese 
militarists probably had serious thoughts of overseas 
campaigns. Today they know that there is only one 
possible procedure, and that is to build a defensive screen 
for themselves from Formosa to Kamchatka, behind 
which they can carry on their aggressive continental 
policy in Siberia and China. In 1910, Japan was almost 
wholly dependent upon Great Britain and America for 
iron and steel. Today, as I show elsewhere, her mines 
at home, in Korea, in Manchuria, and in China, are more 
than enough for any defensive war against either Great 
Britain or the United States. 

As for the psychological effect of a rationing order 
issued by Great Britain and America against the Japa- 
nese Government, nothing would delight the Tokio mili- 
tarists more than such a move. It would enable them to 
cry through their newspapers that the Anglo-Saxon 



WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT IT? 181 

tyranny was scheming to crush the fatherland in order 
to gain the mastery of the Pacific. And there is not the 
shadow of a doubt that nine Japanese out of ten would 
believe it. Nine Americans out of ten believe sillier 
cock-and-bull stories every time they pick up a Sunday 
newspaper. 

But what can be done? Well, there seem to be two 
and only two policies that offer fair prospects. One is 
honest recognition of the brute fact that both Japan and 
the United States desire and are able to manage each its 
own home affairs without interference from the other. 
The other is a no less honest recognition of the larger 
fact that friendly relations between the two countries 
must be built more and more upon popular education. 
The people of Japan must be informed more fully about 
what Americans need and wish. Americans also must 
learn what the troubles and the aspirations of the Japa- 
nese people really are. To know such things is, of course, 
not to avoid grave conflicts of interest. It is absurd to 
suppose that all such conflicts are founded solely upon 
ignorance or improper selfishness. The world is unfor- 
tunately full of men with honestly differing and incom- 
patible standards of living and aspirations. It is full of 
people whose needs cannot all be equally satisfied as 
things now stand. Neither a new morality nor an old 
religion nor a League of Nations will put an end to that 
tragic circumstance. But a more widely spread and more 
accurate public information concerning all such diffi- 
culties will at least incline men to arrange better work- 
ing compromises than they are now disposed to do. 
After all, life, as it now runs on, is nothing but a series 
of compromises; and, despite the abuse which has been 



182 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

heaped upon diplomacy by many intelligent critics, the 
truth is that this supposedly black art is merely an at- 
tempt to work out just such compromises. The sins of 
diplomats are many, be it admitted, but in their recog- 
nition of the wisdom of intelligent compromise, diplo- 
mats evince a higher moral vision than those people pos- 
sess who suppose that the world can be run on some sim- 
ple and inflexible set of lofty principles. 

To achieve a sound compromise with Japan, we should 
encourage every effort on that country's part to dissemi- 
nate information about its own difficulties and unsatis- 
fied needs among us Americans. We should not be over- 
quick to denounce every such move as sinister propa- 
ganda simply because a good deal of it has in the past 
been open to such suspicion. The line between genuine 
popular education and propaganda is vanishingly thin, 
but that is no reason for refusing to listen to every 
statement from Japanese sources. 

As for our own work, we must begin with working out 
an intelligent national policy ; and having found one, we 
must make it known to the world unequivocally. We 
should scorn the polite equivocations and euphemisms 
which have been the stock in trade of old-school politics. 
They will only perpetuate evil misunderstandings. 

So far as Japan is concerned, we have not yet analyzed 
either our difficulties with her or our own national policy. 
The studies that follow in this volume are an attempt to 
throw some light on both. We shall first survey the Jap- 
anese settlements and their activities in our own terri- 
tories, after which we shall look at certain outstanding 
forces in American life which either do or ought to fig- 
ure prominently in shaping our national policy. 



BOOK III 
THE CRISIS IN HAWAII AND CALIFORNIA 



CHAPTER 18 
JAPANESE IN HAWAH 

HAWAII means nothing at all in the political think- 
ing of the average American. The exotic name 
vaguely suggests surf-boards, savages, tourist circulars, 
and active volcanoes. When a Presidential campaign 
comes along, you may always be sure that Reno, 
Nevada, stands a better chance than Honolulu does of 
figuring in the politicians' stump speeches. Our politi- 
cal ideas are still of the small-town caliber. Our voters 
listen with statesmen-like intentness to the gossips who 
allege that the candidate occasionally beats his wife ; but 
when somebody mentions Hawaii and its relations to the 
problem of the Pacific, the audience yawns and begins 
to filter out of the hall. 

In this respect we seem to be very much like our Brit- 
ish cousins. They, you will recall^ used to own a tiny 
island named Heligoland close to the coast of Germany. 
It was scarcely more than a knob of rock some fifty miles 
from the Kiel Canal and from the mouth of the Elbe 
River. But the rock was quite large enough to be re- 
modeled into a fortress of the first magnitude. Only 
thirty years ago, Heligoland was the Hawaii of the Brit- 
ish Empire. It was an insignificant dot in a sea that 
frothed between England and England's chief competi- 
tor in foreign trade and world politics. The average 
Englishman knew and cared as much about Heligoland 

185 



186 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

as our average American cares about Maui. He had no 
cousins or aunts on the island, and the business openings 
there did not lure him. As for its political value, well, 
the empire was too big and too busy to bother much over 
a square mile of waste rock and sand. So he raised no 
cry when, in 1890, the Germans wheedled Lord Salisbury 
to trade Heligoland for a slice of German Africa. There 
were some Englishmen, to be sure, who protested and 
talked about strategic points and such strange things; 
but the rank and file of Great Britain was quite content 
to let the deal be put through. 

So the German flag was raised over this dot of rock, 
and from that hour forth the history of the world was 
written with a new hand, and with a pen of iron dipped 
in blood. To-day every schoolboy in England knows 
that it was the British indifference to Heligoland and 
the sale of the island to Germany that made the German 
Navy possible. 

It was the sale of Heligoland that made possible the 
German invasion of Belgium and the establishment of 
submarine bases on the Belgian coast and in Ireland. 

And it was these bases that prolonged the war at least 
a year and brought the United States into the fray and 
cost billions of money and perhaps a million lives. 

Now, the Hawaiian Islands are so many Heligolands 
of the Pacific. In comparison with the rest of the United 
States, they are mere dots, smaller than the run of coun- 
ties in our Western States. Their natural wealth, while 
considerable in proportion to their size, is nothing but 
small change in the coffers of Uncle Sam. Not one 
American in twenty thousand has ever the slightest busi- 
ness relations with anybody in the Islands. Not one 



JAPANESE IN HAWAII 187 

American in five thousand ever makes even a pleasure 
trip thither. It takes too much time and money to get 
there and back. Thus it comes about that we ignore or 
belittle Hawaii precisely as our Anglo-Saxon relatives 
beyond the Atlantic used to ignore or belittle Heligoland. 
At the same time Hawaii has all of the importance of 
Heligoland and even more. Heligoland was valuable to 
Great Britain only as a naval base, as a defensive out- 
post against possible German aggression. It possessed 
absolutely no value in the upbuilding of world commerce. 
It did not lie on a great trade route where merchant 
ships must put in for coal or for repairs. Hawaii, how- 
ever, is not only one of the world's most strategic naval 
bases ; it is a very rich sugar and pineapple country and 
also the best located coaling-station on the great steamer 
tracks of the Pacific. Vessels plying between America 
and Australia or between America and Asia must put 
in at Honolulu, or else burden themselves unduly with 
extra stocks of coal that eat up cargo space and profits. 

HAWAU HAS BECOME JAPANESE 

Great Britain sold Heligoland to Germany for a piece 
of Africa, and thereby lost billions in money and a million 
lives. The United States is selling Hawaii, not to the 
mikado, but to thousands of his subjects; we are getting 
in paj^ment not other land, but the labor and services 
of the buyers. Will the outcome be another Heligoland ? 

That question is a hard one and must wait. Let us 
first look at things as they are to-day in Hawaii. What 
do we see ? 

We see that more than six out of every ten people in 
the islands are Asiatics. 



188 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

We see that four out of every ten people there are 
Japanese. 

We see that fewer than one out of every ten people 
there are Americans of some European stock in the 
United States. 

Out of a total of 263,666 population in Hawaii to-day, 
we find 159,900 Asiatics. The new United States census 
shows that of these, 109,269 are Japanese. 

Now, when you figure what this means, bear in mind 
that Hawaii is a territory, like Alaska. It is not like 
Porto Rico or the Philippines, a dependency, neither in 
nor out of the United States, and hanging upon the good- 
will of Washington for the power to do things and have 
things done to it. Native Hawaiians are American citi- 
zens. Their rights are guaranteed them under the Con- 
stitution. Children born in Hawaii are American citi- 
zens without further ceremony, be their parents of any 
origin whatsoever. 

Do you see what this leads to so far as the Japanese are 
concerned ? Suppose we merely allow those already here 
to remain. How about their increase in numbers and 
power 1 

The survey made by the United States Commissioner 
of Education in 1919 shows plainly that in ten more 
years, twenty-eight out of every hundred voters in Ha- 
waii will be Japanese. And in twenty years from now 
about fortj^-seven out of every hundred will be. After 
twenty years the number of Japanese voters will double 
every twenty years as the grandchildren of the present 
voters grow up. 

By 1930, then, it seems probable that the Japanese 
may comprise about twenty-eight per cent of the electo- 



JAPANESE IN HAWAII 189 

rate, a sufficiently large proportion to constitute a force 
that must be reckoned with if it acts as a unit. By 1940, 
about forty-seven per cent of the electorate may be ex- 
pected to be composed of voters of this race. From that 
time on, their numerical superiority will grow rapidly, 
the voters doubling every twenty years as children of 
children enter the electorate. 

You may well make the observation that the Japa- 
nese population of Hawaii cannot go on increasing by 
leaps and bounds very much longer, for the islands are 
tiny. True enough. And in this fact lies the prospect 
of a steadily rising tide of yellow travelers from Hono- 
lulu to San Francisco and later perhaps to New Orleans. 
The children of Japan-born parents, being themselves 
American citizens, will be free to shift to the mainland 
of our country as soon as the opportunity for easy living 
in Hawaii fades away. 

Should we allow Japanese laborers to continue coming 
to Hawaii, as they have been in the past, we should thus 
establish a permanent source of Japanese immigration 
into the United States ; and if we allowed these laborers 
to bring in native wives, that immigration would increase 
still faster, and set up in the United States a great Japa- 
nese colony with high birth rate and ever declining death 
rate. 

All this is, of course, nothing against the Japanese. 
It is a mere statement of fact. Before we can judge it 
for good or for evil, we must observe carefully what the 
Japanese in Hawaii are doing. 

On this subject we fortunately have a wealth of detail 
collected and dispassionately reported by the United 
States Commissioner of Education in the same educa- 



1^ MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tional survey from which we have already quoted. The 
four members of the commission making this survey are : 

Frank F. Bunker, Bureau of Education, director of 
the survey. 

W. W. Kemp, chairman of education department, Uni- 
versity of California. 

Parke R. Kolbe, president Municipal University, Ak- 
ron, Ohio. 

George R. Twiss, professor of secondary education and 
state high-school inspector, Ohio State University. 

While these gentlemen were officially interested pri- 
marily in the schools of Hawaii and their unusual prob- 
lems, they found it necessary to study the population of 
the islands and their condition and tendencies. In doing 
this they came upon some highly significant facts. 

They found, for instance, that the Japanese workers 
are morally and mentally superior to all other groups, 
and hence are outstripping these in competition. They 
say: 

"Furthermore, it should be said in fairness that there are few 
Japanese children in the juvenile courts and in the institu- 
tions for delinquents. And there are proportionally very few 
Japanese among the convict labor gangs and in the jails. Few, 
if any, are supported by public charity; nor are any begging 
on the street. Their per capita savings bank deposits rank 
third among those of the island races, being exceeded by the 
Americans and Portuguese only. All of which activity, laud- 
able in itself, can be explained adequately on the basis of racial 
qualities inherent in the Japanese, of patience, persistence, 
thrift, initiative, endurance, ambition, group solidarity, 
coupled with acumen and astuteness which give them the 
ability to get on where other races have failed. Indeed, so 
weU have the Japanese adjusted themselves to island condi- 



JAPANESE IN HAWAII 191 

tions and so rapidly are they increasing in the number of 
Hawaiian bom eliildren, that this group will soon have a 
majority of the voters of the island." 

As we. shall see later, this verdict agrees completely 
with that of all distinterested observers of the situation 
in California. These little yellow men are not drunk- 
ards, as many Irish, German, and English are. They are 
not loafers, as many negroes and back-country Americans 
are. They are not spendthrifts, as nearly all Americans 
are to some degree. They are not criminal, as many 
people of all European stocks are. They are, in brief, 
more nearly model laborers than any other type with 
which we Americans have as yet come in contact. 

The survey commissioners make the further observa- 
tion that just as the Japanese stand out above and apart 
from all the other groups mentally and morally, so do 
they hold aloof from these other groups. They do not 
intermarry, and they strive to preserve their language 
and culture intact. 

"Upon comparison with Chinese marriages and intermar- 
riages, it is noted that there is little tendency on the part of 
the Japanese to amalgamate with the Hawaiians, whereas the 
Chinese have contributed largely to the formation of the Chi- 
nese-Caucasian-Hawaiian mixture. Neither do the Japanese 
marry as freely with the Portuguese as the Chinese have done. 

"The Japanese and Koreans contrast strongly with the Chi- 
nese in race mixture; former groups evincing strong clannish- 
ness in marital selections; the latter groups freely breeding 
'out.' 

"In general, Japanese marry only Japanese; they show re- 
markable racial allegiance, more so, as a race, than any other 
in Hawaii. A few Japanese men have married Hawaiian, 



192 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

part-Hawaiian, and Portuguese women; only one has married 
an American woman. There are surprisingly few marriages 
between the Japanese and the other Asiatic peoples in Hawaii." 

In this respect the Japanese are much like the British. 
When England was building up her empire, she sent 
millions of her sons into India, Egypt, South Africa, 
the China coast, Australia, Malaysia, the West Indies, 
Canada, and the South Seas. These men settled down 
in the midst of many different races, but seldom did they 
marry native women and adopt local customs and lan- 
guage. The Englishman felt himself superior to these 
peoples whose lands he invaded. He loathed the thought 
of demeaning himself to their cultural level. He was in 
blunt fact altogether self-satisfied. And so is the Japa- 
nese. 

He sees no reason why he or his children should for- 
sake his ways, for his ways seem good. And the proof 
that they are good is that they enable him to succeed in 
competition with these other races. So it is that the 
Japanese in Hawaii have established their own schools, 
in which the Japanese language and Japanese ideas are 
taught. 

Listen to the American commissioners on this point. 
They will surprise you : 

"Another handicap of serious character under which the pub- 
lic schools of the Territory are laboring and with which there 
is nothing comparable in the States, is the system of foreign 
language schools which has grown to formidable proportions, 
particularly among the Japanese. Among the island settle- 
ments, however isolated or remote, wherever there is a group of 
Japanese laborers and their families, there is, alongside the 
public school or very near to it, a school set apart for the 



JAPANESE IN HAWAII 19S 

Japanese children who attend the public school. One year 
ago there were 163 of these schools in the Hawaiian Islands, 
manned by 449 teachers and having an aggregate enrollment 
of about 20,000 pupils. A number of new schools have been 
organized since, and in instances, considerable sums, reaching 
$7,000 in one case, have been expended for the purchase of ad- 
ditional sites. In addition to the Japanese, the Koreans and 
Chinese have established language schools, some 22 in number 
with about 40 teachers and approximately 2,000 pupils. 

"Almost all of these schools are of elementary grade, though 
there are a few kindergartens ; and in 11 schools the work par- 
allels the Territorial high schools, in part at least. In all in- 
stances the teachers of the Japanese schools are brought direct 
from, Japan for the purpose. T4iey are certified teachers in 
their home country and, in a number of cases, are recom- 
mended by their local Japanese authorities and the educational 
department of Japan. None of the teachers were bom or 
educated in Hawaii." 

Why should the teachers of these twenty thousand 
children all be brought from Japan? Why do the 
schools not choose young Japanese from California, let 
us say, who speak both Japanese and English fluently 
and know something about American ways and institu- 
tions? Would it not seem reasonable to teach these chil- 
dren about their new fatherland as well as about their 
old one? 

On this point the commissioners quote from an eminent 
Japanese educator: 

"While, doubtless, many teachers are brought from Japan 
rather than procured from among Hawaiian-bom Japanese 
because it is sincerely believed that they speak a purer Japa- 
nese, nevertheless some, at least, share the opinion frankly ex- 
pressed recently before the Japanese Educational Association 



194 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

of Maui by Mr. Obata Shusan, formerly head priest of the 
Mitsuki Girls' School. In characterizing the type of in- 
structor which he thought the language schools needed, he said : 
'^ ^Any man who is to teach in Japanese language schools 
should not he a man with democratic ideas. The language 
school is not a place for a m^n with strong democratic ideas, 
A man of strong Japanese ideas should be its teacher/ " 

School-teachers in Hawaii interviewed by the commis- 
sioners testified in the main as did the one who made the 
following remarks: 

"It is pretty hard to teach American ideals to a child who 
does his thinking in Japanese. . . . 

"As one who speaks Japanese and has had long experience 
in teaching Orientals, I wish to say that if the Japanese 
schools are continued, we shall have a mongrel citizenship, 
both in language and customs. 

"The Japanese schools under cover of religious instruction, 
teach the children loyalty to their Emperor and country. The 
Japanese language schools must go, if we are to teach the 
young Japanese to become Americans." 

Here again we see how very much like the English- 
man, the Frenchman, and the German, our Japanese 
neighbors are. When the Englishman went to India, he 
took his school-teachers with him, and the school-teacher 
took his ideas with him, in his head as well as in his 
school-books. When the devout but very low French 
peasant emigrated to Canada two centuries ago, he did 
the very same thing. And in the province of Quebec 
to-day you find the religion and the politics and the fam- 
ily morals of the eighteenth century still being taught 
in the French language. The people of France have long 
since outgrown these ideas and customs, because France 



JAPANESE IN HAWAII 195 

has continually adjusted herself to the times, has learned 
new things, has faced new problems, and has modified 
her own life to fit the environment. But the French of 
Quebec cling to the shadow of a dead past with fanati- 
cal sentimentalism. The Japanese in Hawaii are com- 
mitted to this fatal policy, which is the most un- 
American of all things. They are perpetuating not only 
the Japanese language, but also political ideas and Bud- 
dhism. 

The power of Buddhism in Hawaii is great. The com- 
missioners find that 

"The Nishi Hongwanji is by far the strongest Buddhist sect 
in the islands, as in Japan, embracing about 75,000 members of 
the island population. This sect in Japan is controlled by a 
cabinet formed of high priests at whose head stands the 
Hoss or cliief priest. The Hoss is held in very high es- 
teem by members of the sect, who honor him as they would 
a living Buddha. The Hoss is represented in the Islands by a 
'Kantoku' (Bishop Imamura), who has absolute authority 
over the priests and teachers of the sect as well as over its 
members, controlling the whole body, according to a Japanese 
authority, 'as easily as he moves his fingers.' " 

Now, no American worthy of the name would wish to 
suppress Buddhism or any other religion so long as its 
practices were not obviously working an injury to other 
people who did not believe in its tenets. If the Japa- 
nese wish to be Buddhists, all well and good; but in 
dealing with Buddhism, we must take into account the 
part it may be playing in establishing an alien culture 
in our society which may cause great trouble. It is an 
almost universal tendency of transplanted religions and 
cults to struggle to reinforce themselves by playing poli- 



196 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tics. We have seen, for example, the Roman Catholics 
in America fight for years to maintain their own reli- 
gious schools, and to this end either seeking an exemption 
from public-school taxes or else gaining public support 
for their own schools. This struggle, as you know, has 
been the source of much friction in many parts of our 
country. And no good ever comes of it. 

It would not be accurate to close this survey without 
citing the testimony of the American teachers in the 
islands who are convinced that the tendency toward the 
creation of a narrow Japanese culture there is weakening. 
Here are two very strong statements from them : 

"The majority of the parents who migrated there from Japan 
were also subject and susceptible to this influence. Therefore, 
it is an undisputed fact that the influence of the Japanese 
language schools up to three years ago was a menace. 

"But fortunately, our entrance into the Great War, our 
gigantic resources operating during the same, the unity and 
patriotism of the American people, the enormous over-subscrip- 
tion of the Liberty Loans, to say nothing of the fighting quali- 
ties of our boys, demonstrated in the trenches of Europe, and 
the respect shown us by the whole world, have all tended to ex- 
plode the unfounded pro-Japanese influence of the Japanese 
language schools. 

"Evidently, when the test arose, the teachings and influence 
of the American schools predominated and the American citi- 
zens of Japanese parents were as anxious to prove their Amer- 
ican patriotism as any others. Hundreds joined the Army and 
thousands of dollars were invested in War Savings and Lib- 
erty Bonds. The school curriculum was changed considerably 
along American lines. The American-born children demanded 
and exercised their birthright. The parents underwent a very 
perceptible mental change to such an extent that, within four 



JAPANESE IN HAWAII 197 

or 'five years hence, the Japanese language schools will become 
obsolete. 

"In conclusion, I state with confidence that the present in- 
fluence of the Japanese schools is more favorable toward 
America than Japan." 

The second teacher pins her faith in the rising genera- 
tion. She says : 

"The schools retard the teaching of English. However, the 
English of the Japanese pupils is better than that of the 
Hawaiian and Portuguese in elementary schools, although I ad- 
mit that out of school it may be less and more limited. These 
schools are not as unpatriotic toward America as some would 
have us believe. Love for Japan comes from the mother and 
father, particularly from the mother if she be a picture bride 
from Japan, knowing nothing of Americanism. She trains 
the child for six years before the schools have the child. The 
Japanese child believes that he can love both countries as he 
does his father and mother and will tell you that. This status 
of double allegiance would be pujt to a test if the countries be- 
came unfriendly. The younger generation of Japanese edu- 
cated in public schools would favor America, I honestly be- 
lieve." 

This is most encouraging, but one is tempted to wonder 
what may happen in the years before the older genera- 
tion of Japanese has passed. We suspect that the greater 
Oriental crisis, of which our own is but a faint premo- 
nition, will come to a head long before then. 



CHAPTER 19 
JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 

ALL the other grievances which Americans harbor 
against the Japanese nation and her people are 
as nothing beside those arising from the so-called *' in- 
vasion ' ' of California. Few Americans east of the Rocky- 
Mountains understand the intense feeling which this situ- 
ation is causing on the Pacific coast. The general opin- 
ion on the Atlantic seaboard is probably summed up 
fairly well by "The Nation," which we have already 
quoted: "A State which imagines that a Japanese popu- 
lation of 87,279 in a total population of 3,200,000 threat- 
ens the destruction of its social order ... is suffering 
from a bad case of 'nerves.' " 

Superficially, this seems to be a fair comment; but 
when we plunge into details, we find it is a complete mis- 
apprehension. Although the remark was made in con- 
nection with an editorial about the recent report of the 
California State Board of Control on the Japanese situ- 
ation, it is clear that the editors did not read this report 
closely ; for the report proves at least one thing ; it proves 
that, whether the Californians who display agitation over 
the Japanese "invasion" are right or wrong in their 
demands for exclusion, they certainly are not suffering 
from "a bad case of 'nerves.' " They are suffering 
from a bad case of facts. 

Let us look at some of these facts, all of which have 

198 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 199 

been sought out, carefully analyzed, and reported in the 
fairest manner conceivable by the State Board of Con- 
trol, in a book of 231 pages packed with well-compiled 
statistics, maps, and special investigations. 

In the first place as to the number of Japanese in Cali- 
fornia, the official State figure of 87,279 is certainly far 
below the mark. And the more recent returns of the 
Federal Census, namely, 70,196, is still further off. And 
for this there are three causes. In the first place, because 
of the difficulty of finding Americans who could speak 
Japanese well enough to take the census in the Japanese 
districts of California, Japanese census takers were ap- 
pointed. Soon after the census reports began coming in 
from these regions, people were struck by the poor show- 
ing the Japanese made. Offhand estimates place their 
numbers in various neighborhoods far above those given 
by the officials. According to newspaper reports, on 
which we dare not place much reliance, of course, some 
volunteer census-takers have checked over certain of the 
suspected districts and have found the correct number 
of Japanese to be greater than reported totals. This 
need not surprise us. For few Japanese census takers 
would be over-zealous in making the number of their 
countrymen out to be as large as possible. 

In the second place, thousands of Japanese live in the 
interior valleys, many parts of which are very remote 
and extremely difficult to canvass thoroughly. It is well 
known that even the best census takers seldom catch all 
the people in such regions. And nothing is easier for the 
Japanese who doesn't care to be quizzed than to lock up 
his shack and go wandering off when the rumor flies that 
a government fellow is coming. 



200 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

In the tliird place, Japanese are stealing into the 
State over the Mexican line, and as that border is very 
long and impossible to patrol with any degree of rigor, 
nobody knows how many men are coming across. Once 
over the line, these Japanese have plenty of room to hide 
in ; for California is a sizable State, full of remote moun- 
tain valleys, in which thousands of settlers might fairly 
lose themselves and no outsider be the wiser. The State 
Board of Control sums up the whole matter as follows : 

"Smuggling across the border, especially the Mexican bor- 
der, has proven exceedingly difficult for the United States 
Immigration Service to prevent. The federal immigration 
patrol upon the Mexican border is entirely inadequate; the 
California-Mexican frontier is 180 miles in length and the 
physical character of the country is such that it is possible to 
cross the border at almost any point; and the big fishing fleet, 
manned principally by Japanese with large power boats, which 
is constantly going back and forth from American waters into 
Mexican waters, provides exceedingly convenient means of un- 
lawful entry for Japanese in particular. Furthermore there 
are many Japanese engaged in agricultural pursuits in the 
Imperial Valley on both sides of the border, and the Japanese 
so engaged are passing to and fro across the line constantly. 
Such conditions render most difficult the checking of those who 
cross and reeross the border. The United States Commis- 
sioner General of Immigration in his report of January 30th, 
1919, declares that smuggling of Japanese across the Mexican 
border is carried on successfully and to a large extent, his lan- 
guage being as follows: 'Confidential information of unques- 
tionable authenticity shows very conclusively that Japanese 
smuggling across the Mexican border is carried on successfully 
and doubtless to a very large extent. Southern California pos- 
sesses a peculiar attraction to the Japanese and it seems in- 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 201 

evitable that if some effective means are not found to curb fur- 
ther growth, the Japanese colonies in that section will expand 
in time into such proportions as to create a serious problem. 
" 'Once safely across the line, the contrabands find conceal- 
ment at conveniently located ranches conducted by fellow 
countrymen, where they work for small wages until a smat- 
tering of English and an air of sophistication are acquired, 
when they proceed toward their respective ultimate destina- 
tions. When any of such contrabands are arrested, the resi- 
dent Japanese who have given them asylum, rush to their de- 
fense and if necessary, do not hesitate to perjure themselves 
as to the period of residence in the United States of the ar- 
rested alien. Vigorous measures and unremitting zeal on the 
part of the immigration officers, resulting in the arrest and de- 
portation of large numbers of contrabands of this class and 
the prosecution of such of the ringleaders and co-conspirators 
of lesser importance as could be found in the United States, 
have served, temporarily at least, to check the influx. The 
participation in this illegal traffic of domiciled aliens, without 
whose assistance it could not survive, has been discouraged to 
no inconsiderable degree by the prosecution instituted during 
the past year. It should be understood, however, that the 
same situation has confronted the district on previous oc- 
casions and will again arise if there is any relaxation of rig- 
orous vigilance. In order to keep the problem in hand, a suf- 
ficient force of alert, resourceful officers must at all times be 
maintained.^ " 

A casual inspection of some sixty miles of this border 
stretch leads me to believe that the above remarl^ under- 
state the difficulties of the patrol. And three members 
of the latter v^ith whom I talked more than confirmed 
this impression. Indeed, I should regard it as a triumph 
of efficiency if these men, working under the present 



202 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

system, caught one Japanese out of every five who stole 
over the line. Nothing short of a barbed wire entangle- 
ment, search lights, and twenty-four-hour patrolling 
from San Diego to the Gulf of California would control 
the situation. 

So far, then, as mere numbers go, the Califomians 
have not developed * ' a bad case of nerves ' ' over a paltry 
87,279 Japanese. They have, if you please, become wor- 
ried over the possibility that these 87,279 persons are 
really about 125,000 persons. Certainly 125,000 Japa- 
nese are more than twice as likely to disturb American 
civilization as 87,279 are; for it is well recognized by 
sociologists that the cohesiveness of such cultural groups 
increases in almost geometrical proportion to its num- 
bers. In other words, if you double the number of peo- 
ple in any self -centered community, you multiply the 
self-sufficiency of that group something like four times, 
and for reasons into which we cannot go here. If such 
a group tends to be exclusive and to perpetuate its lan- 
guage, religion, and social customs, it can and will do 
all this about four times as easily when doubled. 

Thus there are reasons for suspecting that the power 
of the Japanese cultural group in California may be 
much greater than the official census might lead us to be- 
lieve. 

Now, as to the extent to which the Japanese have ** in- 
vaded" the farming districts on the coast, the report 
sums up as follows : 

"The Japanese in our midst have indicated a strong trend 
to land ownership and land control, and by their unquestioned 
industry and application, and by standards and methods, that 
are widely separated from our occidental standards and meth- 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 203 

ods both in connection with hours of labor and standards of 
living", have gradually developed to a control of many of our 
important agricultural industries. Indeed, at the present time 
they operate 458,456 acres of the very best lands in California. 
The increase in acreage control within the last decade, accord- 
ing to these official figures, has been 412.9 per cent. In pro- 
ductive values — that is to say, in the market value of crops pro- 
duced by them — our figures show that as against $6,235,856 
worth of produce marketed in 1909, the increase has been to 
$67,145,730, approximately tenfold. 

"More significant than these figures, however, is the demon- 
strated fact that within the last ten years the Japanese agri- 
cultural labor has developed to such a degree that at the pres- 
ent time between 80 and 90 per cent of most of our vegetable 
and berry products are those of Japanese farms. Approxi- 
mately 80 per cent of the tomato crop of the State is pro- 
duced by the Japanese ; from 80 to 100 per cent of the spinach 
crop; a greater part of the potato and asparagus crops and 
sozon. So that it is apparent that without much more ef- 
fective restrictions in a very short time, historically speaking, 
the Japanese population within our midst will represent a con- 
siderable portion of our entire population, and the Japanese 
control over certain essential food products will be an abso- 
lute one." 

It is most important to grasp the meaning of this. The 
average man east of the Rockies supposes that the Japa- 
nese is like the Chinaman who came to California in the 
old days. The Chinaman was a coolie, hailing as a rule 
from Canton, in southern China. He was the lowest grade 
of large-town worker, generally unskilled, and ready to 
turn his hand to any sort of rough labor that turned up. 
He corresponded to the dock-walloper of our own sea- 
ports and the roustabouts of the Mississippi levees. Not 



204 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

so the Japanese who have poured into California. These 
men are skilled farmers and small business men. 
Strange as it will sound to most of you, they are much 
more like our Pilgrim Fathers than they are like the 
Chinamen of San Francisco 's early days. 

They have left their native land to carve their for- 
tunes where opportunity beckons. They are eager to 
get a solid footing in their new home. They seek to 
become landowners and business men. They do not come 
to work for the Americans any more than the Pilgrim 
Fathers came to work for the Indians. They come as 
the Pilgrim Fathers did, to take possession of the coun- 
try. 

Listen to George Shima, the Potato King, said to be 
the richest Japanese in America. 

"I am a farmer. I have devoted my life to the development 
of the delta district of the Sacramento valley and I know 
little about politics or diplomacy or international questions. 

"We Japanese live here. We have cast our lot with Cali- 
fornia. We are drifting farther away from traditions and 
ideas of our native country. Our sons and daughters do not 
know them at all. They do not care to know them. They 
regard America as their home. 

"We have little that binds us to Japan. Our interest is 
here and our fortune is wedded to this state. What is more 
important, we have unconsciously adapted ourselves to the 
ideals and manners and customs of our adopted country, and 
we no longer entertain the slightest desire to return to our 
native country." 

Mr. Shima speaks the heart of thousands of his immi- 
grant countrymen. And the Easterner, accustomed to 
seeing all kinds of aliens becoming Americans, not only 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 205 

believes the Japanese but sympathizes with his aspira- 
tion. Not so the small California farmer. To him this 
very love of our country and the determination to merge 
one's identity in it threaten him with a competition he 
has already proved himself unable to withstand. 

Many Americans east of the Rockies have said : ' ' How 
foolish to oppose the Japanese when this country needs 
so many farm laborers. The California farmer is biting 
off his nose to spite his face when he advocates exclusion. 
If he shuts out the Japanese he will never find farm la- 
borers. ' ' 

To which we must reply that if the California farmer 
does not shut out the Japanese, he will not need farm la- 
borers much longer. For the Japanese come not as his 
laborers, but as his competitors. The State board report 
says: 

"The Oriental is of no appreciable value as a farm laborer 
to the American farmer. Very few of them ... are in 
the employ of American farmers as purely farm help. . . . 
The Oriental farm-laboring class is valuable principally to 
land speculators or developers who do not farm their own lands, 
but lease them upon some crop basis to Orientals. As a mat- 
ter of fact there are probably more white laborers working 
for Oriental farmers than there are Oriental laborers working 
for American farmers." 

Here we come to the very storm-center. The Ameri- 
can who feels the ''Yellow Peril" acutely is the inde- 
pendent small farmer, — the man with one or two hundred 
acres off which he seeks to get a living and small compe- 
tence for himself and his children. He has, let us say, 
been growing berries or sugar beets or grapes or vege- 
tables on his place for many years, all of which he has 



206 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

been selling in competition with other Americans whose 
standard of work and living has been the same as his own 
or nearly so. His farming neighbors work ten or twelve 
hours a day at the most. They send their boys and girls 
to school for the greater part of the year (and please re- 
member that here in California the greater part of the 
year is work-time on the farm, thanks to the unusual 
climate). Their wives work around the house and per- 
haps attend to a few chickens, but rarely toil in the 
fields save when there is a shortage of help at harvest 
time. And the whole family takes Sunday off whenever 
it can. 

Into a community of such people there comes a keen 
and thrifty Japanese. For a year or two he may work 
around as a farm hand, partly for the sake of making 
money, but chiefly in order to discover the quality and 
promise of the soil in the district. Finally he rents a 
piece of ground, and then appear wife and children, and 
often, too, a small army of friends, all of his same race. 
All of these fall to, working at a pace which bewilders 
and horrifies the Americans thereabouts. Fourteen, six- 
teen, and even eighteen hours in the fields a day are 
schedules frequently observed in Japanese communities. 
And the Japanese are not visibl^^ injured by it. They 
seem to be a stock that has been selected through cen- 
turies of stern competition for their ability to stand such 
a strain. 

Now it is evident that anybody who works sixteen 
hours a day over a crop is going to reap a much larger 
harvest than the man who, with no more skill than the 
sixteen-hour man, toils only ten hours. The Japanese 
new-comer does this, and often more ; for he is, in many 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 207 

instances, much more deeply versed in agriculture than 
his American neighbor. Furthermore, the yellow stran- 
ger is a better business man than nine out of ten of the 
small farmers of American stock. He understands the 
art of cooperation, which we are only beginning to learn. 
He knows how to force his rivals out by underselling for 
a while and then, after the rivals have quit in disgust, 
working his prices up until he has more than reimbursed 
himself for all the temporary losses incurred in squeezing 
these hapless victims out. 

Elwood Mead has found striking cases of this very- 
procedure in the San Joaquin Valley in connection with 
the manipulation of land rents as well as of commodity 
prices. And there is every reason to believe that this 
technic, which is our own large business corporations' 
cherished method, is a matter of common knowledge 
among the Japanese. 

The results of such competition can be clearly read all 
over California. For the statistics we need not go to 
American observers, who may be suspected of prejudice. 
We have luckily at hand a comprehensive study of the 
expansion of Japanese farmers which has been made by 
one of their own countrymen, one Yamato Ichihashi, in- 
structor in Japanese history and economics at Leland 
Stanford University. In 1915 Mr. Ichihashi published a 
volume on "Japanese Immigration," in which he pre- 
sented detailed charts that brought out the following re- 
markable facts: 

Out of every 100 people growing berries in California, 
88 are Japanese. Out of every 100 who raise sugar beets, 
67 are Japanese. Out of every 100 who grow grapes, 52 
are Japanese. Out of every 100 who raise vegetables 



208 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

(for market, of course), 46 are Japanese. Out of every 
100 who grow citrous fruits, 39 are Japanese. Out of 
every 100 who grow deciduous fruits, 36 are Japanese. 

The State board, in commenting upon these findings, 
holds that the percentages would run considerably higher 
to-day. 

Rather a remarkable showing for the paltry 87,279 
Japanese over whom California is said to have a ''bad 
case of nerves, " is it not ? Particularly when you pause 
to consider that California's fame in the farming lines 
rests upon her berries, her lemons, oranges, and grapes. 

We must, in the light of all the evidence, admit the 
proud claims of Toyoji Chiba, managing director of the 
Japanese Agricultural Association in California, that his 
countrymen are, from the point of view of sheer efficiency 
and endurance and cunning, superior to many, if not of 
most, of the ordinary white farmers. Certainly anybody 
who has inspected Japanese farms will agree with the 
general position, if not of the detail, of Mr. Chiba 's fol- 
lowing remarks : 

"For three thousand years, the Japanese in the narrow con- 
fines of their native land have cultivated the soil and have 
made it produce food for 60,000,000 people, a surprising fact 
of deep significance. On the other hand^ it enables one to 
imagine what trouble and distress they have undergone in order 
to preserve the productivity of the soil, while too, the fact 
that to the Japanese farmer the habit of valuing and taking 
care of the land has become second nature must not be over- 
looked. We believe that in all the world the Japanese 
people have no superiors in the matter of producing large 
crops from small areas, and in the habituul skill with which 
they are able to restore the productive energy of the soil. We 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 209 

do not think that even the Danes, who have world-wide fame 
for their intensive farming, surpass the Japanese in this re- 
spect. Look, for example, at the illustrations of this in Cali- 
fornia. The Japanese, who were late comers, when they took 
up farming land, had to settle on the poorest lands in Cali- 
fornia, as can be easily imagined by the poorness of the soil 
in the vicinity of Florin, Livingston, and Bowles near Fresno, 
where Japanese farmers are peacefully settled. But the Jap- 
anese with their inherited three thousand years' experience in 
restoring the energy of the soil, had no sooner settled there 
than, like King Midas, they converted these regions into the 
best farming districts of California. We think this fact 
proves the above statements regarding the skill of Japanese in 
the treatment of land. 

"Examples of the way in which the Japanese farmei-s are 
converting abandoned farms into excellent ones have already 
been written up frequently by American investigators, but 
we wish to add another instance. Eleven years ago, a Japa- 
nese farmer at Livingston bought from an Italian or Portu- 
guese farmer who had become weary of country life and aban- 
doned it, a fifteen acre field of desolate land planted with old 
almond and fig trees which had almost ceased to bear. The 
Japanese purchaser had become fond of farming and desired 
to establish a permanent home there. This industrious settler 
bought up manure from a nearby town and spaded it into 
the old field. While others irrigated once, he irrigated two or 
three times. He cultivated the fields deeply and painstakingly 
over and over again, and while taking measures to restore the 
soil, he also pruned the old fruit trees, grafting in branches of 
improved varieties, spraying to drive out injurious insects 
three or four times, where others were spraying but once, and 
as the result of this improved culture, there is probably no 
fruit farm to be seen in California which compares with this 
one." 



210 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Some competent observers, while admitting that the 
Japanese farmers do get results, attribute their high suc- 
cess to their immense effort and stick-to-itiveness rather 
than to their agricultural wisdom. Thus the Westfall- 
Lane Company, one of the largest melon-distributors in 
the State. In a letter to the State Board of Control on 
the Japanese in the Turlock district, where this company 
has large holdings and has been leasing acreage to them 
and financing them, Mr. David F. Lane, general manager, 
says: 

"From an agricultural standpoint, it is necessary for us to 
keep a man in the field to see that these Japanese farm their 
land right. This may seem to you a strange statement, con- 
sidering that it is generally assumed that the Japs are such 
wonderful farmers. They are not wonderful farmers, but 
hard workers, and the success that they have made, in my 
estimation, is principally charged up or credited to their per- 
sistent plugging and consistent attention to their lands.'' 

Even if this opinion is nearer the truth, it does not 
alter the fact that Japanese do grow more crops per acre 
and make more money than the run of white farmers 
with whom they compete. The State Board of Control 
itself asserts that ''any sudden removal of the Japanese 
from their present agricultural pursuits in California 
would affect our food supply very seriously. The annual 
output of agricultural products by Japanese in 1919, ap- 
proximating $67,000,000, consists of food products prac- 
tically indispensable to the state's daily supply. The 
Japanese, being a race of short people, seem willing to 
engage in those lines of agricultural work which call for 
so-called ''squat labor" or the class of "stoop and pick 
labor." 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 211 

The defenders of the Japanese immigrants have cor- 
rectly maintained that these newcomers have, in large 
measure, gone to districts where living and working con- 
ditions were such that few or no whites would settle. 
We find hundreds of Japanese in the Imperial Valley and 
around the Delta country engaged in truck gardening. 
These are the two richest spots in all California and the 
two least attractive to the ordinary American of North 
European stock. To make matters worse, the most prof- 
itable farming there is just that sort of gardening which 
requires much "squat labor." Cantaloupe raising is a 
good specimen of this, and so is tomato growing. The 
Eastern backyard amateur who reads the seductive seed 
catalogues may have difficulty in imagining why any 
white man should object to planting, weeding, spraying 
and harvesting cantaloupes or tomatoes. Let him know, 
though, that in the middle of the day the marvelously 
rich top soil of these highly favored regions commonly 
attains a temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit and 
occasionally becomes as hot as a desert rock, which can 
scarcely be touched by the human hand. 

Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley have told me that 
similar heat often occurs there too. Naturally, field 
workers knock off during these mid-day hours, whenever 
possible. But even the early and late hours are very 
hot, for in these shut-in valleys there is little cooling off^ 
over night. The wonder is that even the Japanese, who 
are not well adapted to tropical life, have managed to 
endure gardening work there. It is not at all surpris- 
ing to hear reports from land owners in the Imperial 
Valley indicating that many Japanese have lately been 



212 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

leaving the region, giving way to the all-enduring Mexi- 
can peon. 

THE JAPANESE FISHERIES 

The same process of "benevolent assimilation" is going 
on in another of California's major industries, namely, 
that of deep-sea fishing. Here is what the State Board 
of Control finds, and here too are some of the questions 
which those findings provoke : 

"It is very significant to note that the increase in Japanese 
fishermen as shown above from the license year 1915-1916 to 
the license year 1919-1920 was 168% or 825 persons, while 
all of the other nationalities combined increased but 2.07%, or 
88 persons. This increase in the number of Japanese fisher- 
men is confined largely to southern California waters. 

"For the fishing fleet, operating off our coast, to be manned 
bj^ an alien people involves several factors vital to the best in- 
terests of this country, amounting, in fact, to potential dan- 
gers. 

"(a) Is it good public policy at any time, whether in peace 
or in war, to have so important a food as the fish industry 
monopolized by peoples of an alien race? The growth of the 
fish industry has made it one of the principal sources of food 
supply for the State. 

"(b) The fishing boats in their daily and constant travels in 
and out and up and down the coast acquire an intimate knowl- 
edge of coast line, harbors and defenses wliich is not only ex- 
ceedingly valuable if used for the benefit of the countrj^, but 
would be extremely dangerous to us and serviceable to an 
enemy if made available to such enemy during a period of war. 

"(c) The experience of the British, in particular, during the 
late World War demonstrated the value of the fishing fleet 
for patrol duty along the coast line. During the war. the fish- 
ing fleet with its small boats scattered along the entire coast 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 213 

proved exceedingly valuable in reporting the approach of 
enemy boats and submarines. In the case of California, with 
a fishing fleet manned by aliens, especially if circumstances 
made them enemy aliens, we would not only lose the valuable 
services of these boats for patrol duty during a time of war, 
but these same boats might become a powerful aid to the 
enemy. 

"(d) This fishing fleet provides a convenient means for 
illegal entry into the State. The following language appears 
on page 409 of the 1919 report of the United States Commis- 
sioner of Immigration: 'Numbers of Japanese fishing boats 
on the Pacific Coast, operating in Mexican waters, are em- 
ployed to facilitate the illegal entry of Japanese laborers.' " 

Here is not the place to discuss the wider significance 
of these facts. But it should be stated emphatically that 
when all the factors in the American -Japanese situation 
have been weighed, the menace of this Japanese fishing 
fleet proves to be a mere bogey. We have already seen 
that the Japanese do not and cannot seriously entertain 
the thought of attacking our Pacific Coast. 

JAPANESE SEGREGATION AND CLANNISHNESS 

It need hardly be said that, as a consequence of the 
great differences in language and culture between our 
people and the Japanese immigrants, the latter could not 
scatter among our white population even if they chose 
to. It would be poor business for them, just as it would 
be for a thousand Americans who knew no Russian and 
were bent on making their living to scatter themselves 
through Siberia. In union there is strength, and comfort 
as well. 

Over and above this natural impulse to stick together, 



214 



MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 



there is another force at work in the case of the Japa- 
nese. Our laws deny them the privilege of citizenship, 
and yet allow them to come to work here under the ' ' Gen- 
tlemen 's Agreement ' ' now in force. The laws of Japan, 
to which they owe allegiance, not by choice so much as 



San Francisco 




The dotted line in the above outline map indicates the valleys 
of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. The area enclosed is 
approximately the total of agricultural California, less than one- 
ienth of which falls outside of this valley district. 




215 




216 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 217 

hy necessity, require them to form associations which are 
under the surveillance of Japanese consuls or other offi- 
cials; and it is of course to Japan that they must look 
for protection and aid. Obviously, then, they have every 
good reason to concentrate in communities of their own. 
And this they are doing all over California. 

The recent exhaustive surveys by the State Board of 
Control bring this tendency out with great clearness. 
We here reproduce three maps prepared by the board, 
the first designating the five chief Oriental districts of 
the State, the second presenting in full detail the land- 
holdings of the Japanese in the richest part of the Great 
Valley, and the third showing similar holdings in the 
wonderfully fertile Imperial Valley, on the Mexican bor- 
der. In studying these maps, you must keep in mind 
the several primary facts about the geography and agri- 
culture of California. Note particularly the following: 

1. It is generally conceded that the Japanese farmer, 
by his long training in intensive agriculture, especially 
in truck gardening and the growing of small fruits, can 
surpass and hence drive out the white farmer. 

2. In other branches of agriculture, however, the Jap- 
anese has no marked superiority. It is only in lines of 
farming where the yield and profit per acre depend 
largely on the amount of hand labor and the length of 
the day's work that he vanquishes all competitors. 

3. California is composed chiefly of mountains, high 
mountain valleys, and minor plateaus. Roughly speak- 
ing, not more than one-sixth of the State can ever be 
developed intensively, and much of this one-sixth can- 
not profitably be so handled until the population there 
becomes very dense, which will not happen for many 



218 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

generations to come. Of the other five-sixths of the 
State, much more than half is forever uninhabitable. 
Lofty mountains, blazing deserts, interior valleys which 
must remain forever waterless; and in the north other 
mountains thick with giant timber. This is the greater 
part of California. 

When we are thinking about the human problems such 
as those involved in the Japanese issue, we must imagine 
California to be about one-sixth of her actual size. 

4. Of this rich one-sixth, the great bulk lies in one 
unbroken level plain which extends down from the upper 
reaches of the Sacramento River, in the north, to the 
head waters of the San Joaquin River, roughly a hun- 
dred miles north of Los Angeles. A relatively small 
tract lies in the Imperial Valley, in the extreme south- 
east, adjoining Mexico. The remaining potential garden- 
land is scattered throughout most of the State except the 
extreme north and the eastern half. While some of 
these areas would be regarded as large in our Eastern 
States, they are mere dots on the map of California. 

5. It is in the fertile one-sixth of the State that the 
Japanese have concentrated. 

6. Less than one-third of the white population of the 
State lives in this same fertile region. Thus, from the 
point of view of community life and economic develop- 
ment, the effective proportion of Japanese to whites is 
much greater than the general statistics for the State at 
large would indicate. 

7. In the entire State to-day there are 3,893,500 acres 
under irrigation, and irrigation is indispensable every- 
where in California. These irrigated tracts are, of 
course, the richest, and of them the Orientals have col- 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 219 

onized and now occupy 623,752 acres, of which 458,056 
are occupied by Japanese. 

The situation is still further aggravated by the un- 
usually bad distribution of population throughout the 
State. With a total of 3,426,536 inhabitants, a very 
small number for the size of the State, fully two-thirds 
of these live in the metropolitan areas of the three chief 
cities. The new census shows a full million people in San 
Francisco and its suburbs, nearly a million in and around 
Los Angeles, and close to 125,000 in and around San 
Diego. Were it possible to check off the miners, the 
lumbermen of the North, the transient Mexican laborers, 
and the very large leisure class of well-to-do retired East- 
erners who live outside of the three urban zones just 
named, and who do not count in either the economic or 
social development of rural California, the total of those 
whose lives and fortunes are bound up in the wholesome 
upbuilding of rural life in California would turn out to 
be considerably smaller, probably much less than one 
million. 

We must begin to see that on the economic and social 
side of the issue the Californians themselves have not 
made out as strong a case against the Japanese ''in- 
vasion" as the facts warrant. They have been loath to 
admit what they and everybody else knows to be a fact ; 
namely, that the real California is essentially not a 
seaside playground, but a farming State, and always must 
be; and that an abnormally large part of its people do 
not live in the farming regions and have no genuine in- 
terest in its development and hence will not influence or 
be influenced by what happens in the Great Valley, Im- 
perial, and other agrarian districts. 



220 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

The motion-picture stars and camera-men of the South 
do not plow the ground. The army of ex-farm hands 
and ex-villagers from Iowa and Illinois w^ho haunt the 
cafeterias of Los Angeles have put agriculture forever 
out of their minds. The people from Boston and Phila- 
delphia who inhabit the beautiful shore homes from 
Monterey to San Diego cannot be expected to worrj^ over 
the troubles of the rice-grower of the Sacramento Valley 
and the melon-farmer of Turlock. Most of them come to 
California late in life to enjoy their last years in the sun 
and flowers and scenery of this wonderful region. No 
Japanese distress them by their presence or competition ; 
so, human nature being what it is, their interest in the 
local social and business issues of farmers one or two hun- 
dred miles away must be decidedly academic. 

Thus we see that the social and economic struggle is 
really between some 800,000 whites thinly scattered over 
a region smaller than New York State and compact 
groups of Japanese officially numbering 87,279, but 
sureh^ more in reality. The whites, while they practise 
cooperation much more extensively than most American 
farmers do, in fact, still lag far behind the Japanese. 
We have heard of no case in which groups of California 
whites do more than cooperate in buying farm supplies 
and farm products. But the Japanese do much more. 
Their clannishness is a very real business force. It pays 
dividends. Listen to Mr. David R. Lane, the Turlock 
melon-grower, on this : 

"The Japanese are cooperative. They usually practice this 
cooperativeness in what we term at this time as a 'clan.' 
These clans are made up of from five to twenty people. 

"These clans pool their interests. For example ; if one man 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 221 

loses, the others help him out; they go so far as endorsing 
each other's notes on advances made or for leases to be paid. 

"During the attention that I have given to these people, I 
find that these clans are transported clans from Japan. That 
is to say, Japanese living and operating in provinces in Japan 
clique together in the nited States and cooperate in their 
agricultural ventures. They go so far that a leader of a clan, 
or his heirs in Japan, inherits the same right when the mem- 
bers are transported in this country. 

"This is usually what 'he' means when he refers to 'my 
friend.' When a Jap succeeds in a venture, he stakes his 
friend to lease a piece of the property and he becomes the 
next unit to their cooperative system. This friend is picked 
from their working classes, that is, a laboring man. He has 
worked with him in the cantaloupe field or has some agricul- 
tural exj^erience. They also cooperate in helping one another 
to plow and to do all kinds of agricultural work. Especially 
is this true if one of their number is behind with his work. 

'"All this sounds very lovable and brotherly, but these people 
have their difficulties. If a Jap attempts to lease more land 
than he is able to handle, he is notified by them to cut some 
of the land out of his holdmgs and get down to a basis where 
he can handle it economically. If he neglects the land, jeop- 
ardizing the financial responsibilities of the others, he is cor- 
rected, but, let me say at this time, very diplomatically. If 
he does not take care of his land, the others go in on the prop- 
erty, combining their efforts to get the land up to the proper 
condition as speedily as possible." 

This is a degree of shrewdness and team work which 
we Americans have yet to learn. AVith us it must come 
as a matter of slow progress. With the Japanese, it is 
not progress; it is merely the survival of the old clan 
customs that grew up untold centuries ago in Japan. 
It happens to be a most useful survival when trans- 



222 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ferred to a land where even yet every white man has to 
shift for himself, and ''the devil take the hindmost." 

What, we may wonder, would happen if a few million 
men and women dominated by this most effective clan 
spirit were to settle in the midst of us Americans? To 
visualize the trend, take a particular group of young 
people such as the pupils of the grammar school at 
Florin, Sacramento County, divided into two nearly 
equal race groups, Americans and Japanese. Count 
heads, weigh the minds, then look into the future ! 

Trained in the idea of ''personal liberty" and resent- 
ing authority, these American boys and girls will grow 
up with free spirits, and go their various ways in life. 
Some will attend the Methodist Church and join the car- 
penters' union. Others will become Mormons and drift 
off to the San Francisco Bay ship-yards. Still others 
will go into politics and eventually get jobs in Washing- 
ton, perhaps. Twenty years from now they will have 
forgotten one another, and will be scattered in half a 
hundred trades and towns. But how about the Japanese 
children ? 

Before or after the day's work at this public school, 
most of them have to attend a Japanese school. Here 
they are taught the Japanese language and the history 
and ideals of Japan. They learn the edicts, in which 
the mikado is exalted as God's local manager. During 
vacation these children work in the fields with their 
parents, sometimes from ten to fourteen hours a day. 
And when they grow up, they are taken into the clan, 
given an interest in the business, whatever that may hap- 
pen to be, and from thenceforth their lives are effectively 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 223 

regulated by the group. They will do what the group 
deems best. If they lose, the group will make up the 
losses. If they make much money, the whole group bene- 
fits thereby. 

So, twenty years hence, all the Japanese survivors of 
this group of eighty children of Florin will be prosperous 
members of a clan, and happ}^ to be such. But of the 
American group, most will be struggling along ' ' on their 
own," while some will certainly be poor, and a few rich. 
The struggling and the poor will be discouraged and per- 
haps disgruntled. And it would not be at all strange if 
some of them were to wish they had been bom in Japa- 
nese families. 

In this prospect, not at all an improbable one, by the 
way, we see the possibilities of shattered morale and 
social disturbances much graver than those brought about 
by the differences between whites and blacks. The negro 
at his best is still mentally and morally weaker than the 
white. He cannot present a solid front against white 
critics and white attackers, and, above all, he is totally 
lacking in cunning. The white who chooses to do so can 
out -bully him and outmanoeuver him with contemptuous 
ease. But not so with the Japanese. It is quite possible 
that, if matters came to a head, these people would, with 
their age-old instincts and habits of perfect team work 
and utter fearlessness, stagger white humanity precisely 
as they staggered the Russians around Mukden and Port 
Arthur when first their blood brothers proved themselves 
the military equals of Europe and burst into the arena 
of world power. 



224 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

THE JAPANESE BIRTH-RATE 

It is a well-established fact that any group, shifting 
from a densely populated region where living conditions 
are hard to a new and sparsely peopled land where they 
find it much easier to win bread, brings many children 
into the world. This fact, which will be discussed at 
length in a later chapter, has been richly confirmed in 
California. 

The Japanese there to-day are outbreeding the Amer- 
icans at the startling rate of three to one. In 1910 there 
were in the State 313,280 married white women, who in 
the same year gave birth to 30,893 children. This is a 
birth-rate of 9.9 per cent, or virtually one child to every 
ten married women. In 1919 there were 15,211 Japanese 
women there, nineteen years of age or older; and this 
group gave birth to 4,378 children in the year. This 
is a birth-rate of 28.8 per cent, not far from being one 
child to every three women. 

An even more striking comparison has been brought 
out by the State Board of Control. In 1910 there was 
only one Japanese child to every forty-three white chil- 
dren born in California, but in 1919 there was one to 
every twelve. In the eighteen farming counties where 
the Japanese have been concentrating, the number of 
Japanese births has multiplied almost exactly four times 
during the last decade; and in the most densely settled 
Japanese districts, such as the rural regions of Sacra- 
mento County, 49.7 per cent, or virtually one half of all 
births were Japanese in the year 1919. 

Some Califomians have exao:orerated the significance 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 225 

of this. They have assumed that this high birth-rate will 
continue indefinitely. All evidence from other migra- 
tions, however, points to the conclusion that the rate 
will slowly decline as the group prospers and grows. 
It must be admitted, though, that just a^ in the case of 
the European Catholics^ such as the Irish, the Italians, 
and the Poles, so with the Japanese: the influence of the 
priests and the religious faith work powerfully to keep 
up the hirth-rate. Many students of Japanese culture 
have commented upon the sincere belief of the ordinary 
Japanese that it is his religious duty to maintain and in- 
crease the splendor and power of the mikado and his 
people by bringing as many children into being as pos- 
sible. Where this idea is active, the decline of the birth- 
rate through material prosperity must be considerably 
checked. 

We may, therefore, expect from the Japanese some 
slight drop in births over a fairly long period, but not a 
decline equal to that which we find in the profoundly ir- 
religious stocks, who, like the Anglo-Saxon and the 
French, order their family life according to their personal 
wishes. 

It is certain that, in any event, the Japanese popula- 
tion here will double every thirty years or thereabouts 
so long as the Japanese villages preserve their social in- 
tegrity and their religious views. Thus by 1950, Cali- 
fornia will have about 200,000 Japanese and, by 1980, 
about 400,000 if nothing is done to change the present 
situation beyond checking further Japanese immigration 
altogether. This, too, without our reckoning on the 
110,000 Japanese in Hawaii, whose American-born chil- 



226 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

dren long before 1950 will be streaming into the Pacific 
coast country in search of opportunities that the tmy 
islands of their birth cannot offer. 

Mr. Warren S. Thompson has computed for us the 
probable growth of Japanese colonies in California for 
the next 40 years. He proceeds on three different as- 
sumptions. If Japanese immigration be excluded hence- 
forth, in 1960 the population will have grown to 228,279. 
If, secondly, the number of Japanese immigrants enter- 
ing California remains the same for each decade as it was 
during the decade from 1910-1920, in 1960 there will be 
372,647 Japanese in California. Lastly, if the number 
of immigrants entering California during each of these 
decades bears the same ratio to the total Japanese popu- 
lation in California at the beginning of each decade as it 
did during the decade 1910-1920, by 1960 there will be 
1,116,279 Japanese in California. 

The details of Mr. Thompson's estimates will be found 
in the Appendix. 

Before letting this affect our final judgment, we must 
note that if the white population of California continues 
to grow at the same rate that it has for the last sixty 
years, it will touch ten million in 1950 and thirty million 
in 1980. Such an increase is quite impossible, however. 
Many forces tend to reduce it greatly. 

One of them is the tremendous set-back American 
agriculture has received during the past year, as a result 
of incompetent agrarian legislation and the failure to 
establish foreign credits which might sustain the export 
market for farm products. Another force is the cer- 
tainty that, after the present depression, industrialism 
will revive much more promptly than agriculture, by 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 227 

virtue of its superior organization, its more intelligent 
leadership, and its power over the banks ; and hence that 
the movement of farm workers toward the cities, which 
has been steadily increasing for a full generation, will 
continue unabated. A third influence is the probable 
reduction of European immigration at least for a few 
years to come. And a fourth is the natural operation of 
the law of diminishing returns in farming, which must 
before long be accelerated by the peculiar difficulties in 
getting water for irrigation throughout the richest sec- 
tions of California. 

The first three of these forces are more or less familiar 
to every reader who follows the news of the day. The 
last is not generally understood and calls for comment. 

The ordinary American thinks of water in terms of 
household use. On this basis of measurement, California 
has plenty of water for millions of kitchens and bath- 
rooms. But in a region of very low rainfall, we must 
first think of water for irrigation. And it requires little 
imagination to realize that a hundred-acre field of pota- 
toes or carrots must drink up a thousand gallons of water 
for every one which the farmer and his folks use in cups 
and wash basins. Now, with her supply of irrigation 
water, California is already living much closer to the 
margin of existence than the natives like to admit. It is 
doubtful whether the territory south of Los Angeles can 
maintain much more than double its present population, 
with its very low rainfall, and total lack of rivers and 
lakes. Already the water shortage in central California 
is so grave that, as a result of three years of subnormal 
rainfall, the authorities have been compelled to forbid 
the use of electricity for advertising display through the 



228 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

summer and autumn of 1920, and San Francisco and 
other cities have greatly curtailed their street lighting. 
And many rice growers in the Sacramento Valley have 
been in trouble. 

Were the bulk of the next 2,000,000 new-comers in 
California to enter the farming districts and hence use 
immense quantities of water for irrigating, the ingenuity 
of the state engineers would be taxed to find the requisite 
flow. Beyond all doubt, then, the law of diminishing re- 
turns in agriculture will be accelerated considerably in 
its application all over the State. And this cannot fail 
to react adversely upon the growth of population at no 
distant date. 

California land boomers, to be sure, will tell you that 
the State can support sixty or seventy million people in 
comfort. But all such amateur statistics are preposter- 
ous. And even the optimistic agricultural experts on the 
Coast laugh at them. Add only two or three more mil- 
lions to the farming sections, and the cost of water will 
rise to a point where it makes serious inroads on the 
profits from all crops save the few that show the largest 
net returns, such as fancy oranges, fancy prunes, and the 
like. Thereafter the only way in which most farming 
can be made to pay will be by lengthening the farmer's 
day and trimming his workers' wages. And that has- 
tens the land downward toward the Asiatic standard of 
living, against which it is now up in arms. 

Now, this tendency would work to the advantage of the 
Japanese or any other race with a low standard of living. 
For it will be the white farmer who will drop out of the 
game first, as profits and comforts dwindle as a result 
of water shortage and" its attendant hardships. The Asi- 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 229 

atic, accustomed to harder work, longer hours, and a 
smaller return per unit of labor, would therefore outlive 
the American under such conditions. 

Here is the paradox then : The more white people in 
California, the easier it will be for the Japanese to win 
in competition. 

Many Americans will laugh at this, but some day they 
will change their tune ; for the paradox is an inexorable 
result of a fundamental law of economics working in a 
region where a high and a low standard of living come 
into conflict. Its beginnings are already visible. 

JAPANESE VIRTUES AND DEFECTS 

Many Americans east of the Rockies suppose that the 
. Californian feels toward the Japanese pretty much as his 
fathers did toward the Chinese who came in on the tail 
of the gold rush. They suppose that he regards the new- 
comer as dirty, knavish, superstitious, and altogether in- 
ferior to the noble white man. This view, which has 
recently been accepted by "The Nation" and some other 
I papers, has not the slightest foundation in fact. Inter- 
, views with farmers and business men from the Japanese 
: districts of California reveal the very opposite opinion, 
and so wide-spread is this opposite opinion that nearly 
all newspapers of the State have repeatedly expressed it 
in the clearest language. It is no suave diplomatic 
camouflage which Governor Stephens indulges in when 
he says, in a letter to Secretary of State Colby: 

"It is also proper to state that I believe I speak the feelings 
of our people wlien I express to you a full recognition of the 
many admirable qualities of the Japanese people. We assume 
no arrogant superiority or race or culture over them. Their 



230 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

art, their literature, their philosophy, and in recent years, 
their scientific attainments have gained for them a respect 
from the white peoples in which we, who know them so well, 
fully share. We have learned to admire the brilliancy of their 
art and the genius that these people display. We respect their 
deep philosophy which flows so placidly out of that wonder- 
ful past of theirs and which has come down through ages that 
antedate our Christian era. We join with the entire civilized 
world in our admiration of the tremendous strides which the 
Japanese nation has made in the last two generations, unpar- 
alleled as its careers is in the history of nations. We respect 
the right of the Japanese to their true development and to the 
attainment of their destiny." 

This truly represents the sentiment of everybody in 
California except the blatherskites, who, while unpleas- 
antly numerous in San Francisco and Sacramento, are 
still a negligible fraction of the citizenry. 

The truth is that for the first time in American his- 
tory we find here the virtues of immigrants being largely 
responsible for the feeling against their presence in our 
land. Here are a few facts of common knowledge 
in California that contribute to this anomalous situa- 
tion. 

The Japanese is not ''cheap labor." The Chinese 
coolie used to work for anything he could get, from fifty 
cents a day up. But does the Japanese follow suit? 
Far from it. He is too shrewd and too progressive. He 
exacts "all the traffic will bear" in the most thoroughly 
Yankee fashion. The prevailing rate of wages which the 
common Japanese farm hand was getting last year was 
$4.50 per day. In the cities Japanese cooks, waiters, 
valets, barbers and other similar workers ask as much as 
or even more than their white competitors. The valets 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 231 

notably can command considerably more than most 
whites, thanks to their gentle manners, their thorough- 
ness, and their lack of resentment toward long and ir- 
regular hours. 

In matters of personal cleanliness the Japanese is im- 
measurably superior to the Chinese coolie and consider- 
ably above the Russian Jews, Italians, Slovaks, Irish and 
other European stocks. This is one of the first things to 
strike the Eastern observer who is familiar with the for- 
eign settlements in New York, Philadelphia, and other 
Atlantic centers. But, like these aliens, the Japanese 
finds himself, as a poor and unestablished new-comer, 
compelled to inhabit dwellings and neighborhoods of the 
lowest types until he can save money enough to seek more 
congenial quarters. 

This appears clearly in the report made to the State 
Board of Control by Edward A. Brown, chief sanitary 
engineer of the California State Commission on Immi- 
gration and Housing. Speaking first of the farm labor 
camps out in the country districts, he says : 

"One very noticeable feature in a Japanese labor camp where 
both American and Japanese laborers are employed is that the 
quarters provided for Japanese are generally much better than 
those provided for Americans. 

"At every camp where Japanese are employed, a bath is pro- 
vided (Japanese type). The Japanese are very clean about 
their persons, not so much about the living quarters; open 
toilets, open drains from the kitchen sink, unscreened dining 
and cooking quarters and living quarters generally littered with 
boxes, bags, etc. Their sleeping quarters are, as a rule, a 
platform built the length of the structure and the bunks closed 
in by boards or burlap, a small opening being left in the wall, 
which has a sliding board. Camp inspectors order the re- 



232 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

moval of all such enclosures and insist that light and fresh 
air be admitted into the sleeping quarters. 

"In the cities, the Japanese select some district to live 
in. Frequently it is a district where the former residents 
have been outlawed. From the first, they start to move into 
the better parts of the cities. A Japanese quarter in any 
city of California will show the same conditions — houses 
crowded, ill smelling, cluttered up with various foodstuffs, 
a store in front and living quarters in the rear. Near Santa 
Monica in Los Angeles County, is a Japanese fishing village 
which I had occasion to investigate. Shack houses, each a 
fish drying place, open toilets, open sewers, and a stench that 
made the salt air from the ocean negligible, was the condition 
that I found. I merely use this as an example of what the 
usual conditions are where Japanese live. 

"The Japanese hotels and boarding houses in Sacramento are, 
for the most part, poor. They are old buildings, usually with- 
out heat in the rooms and occasionally with no bathroom in the 
building. There usually is a toilet to each floor. There are 
poor accommodations for visiting Japanese, there being no 
first-class hotel. 

"In the rural districts, conditions are crowded, but they at 
least have bathing facilities where the Japanese bathe almost 
daily when they have the opportunity. In the rice growing 
districts, I notice that the Japanese provide good accommoda- 
tions for their own people, putting up more or less permanent 
houses with bathing facilities, etc. In the fruit growing dis- 
tricts along the Sacramento River and elsewhere, as well as in 
the vegetable growing districts on the islands, conditions are 
not so good. They usually have some old cabin or cabins 
w^hich have been on the place for years and which are veiy 
often in a filthy condition. The Japanese farmer usually feeds 
bis help at his own table and during the busy season their eat- 
ing quarters are exceedingly crowded. As the Secretary of the 
Japanese Association of the Sacramento Valley put it, 'On 



JAPANESE IN CALIFORNIA 233 

account of short leases the Japanese are able to obtain, they 
do not feel justified in putting up good accommodations. It 
is true the tenants eat well, wear good clothes and wear dia- 
monds, but do not build good houses/ " 

Everywhere in California it is quite plain that, as fast 
as a Japanese family gets on its feet financially, it seeks 
cleaner and pleasanter quarters, goes to the movies, con- 
sumes ice-cream soda, buys an auto and in every other 
way adopts American tastes and little indulgences. At 
the same time it appears to save money more rapidly 
than the ordinary American family on the same economic 
level, and thus advances more rapidly. In this there is 
no mystery. What happens is that all members of the 
Japanese family work except the babies, while in the 
American family only the father and the adult children 
earn money. 

I The Japanese exhibits higher personal morality than 
' any other immigrant type in all matters of conforming to 
the law. Both in Hawaii and California, it is a matter 
I of record that Japanese are rarely arrested for any cause, 
iand few actions are brought against them. Doubtless 
this is due in some measure to their realization of the 
i feeling against them and the consequent need of keeping 
out of trouble. But it is probably in the main an ancient 
habit. We find it noted by many travelers in Japan. 
I In another connection we have pointed out that commer- 
cial dishonesty in Japan is common and tolerated as a 
matter of caste ethics. Of this we see little in California, 
for the simple reason that the great bulk of the Japanese 
there are farmers, artisans, and students, among whom 
that low moral standard does not prevail in the father- 
land. 



234 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Among Californians to-day there is little disagreement 
as to these characteristics of their unwelcome invaders. 
Why, then, should there be such opposition to the yellow 
influx? To answer this question, we must report some 
facts about Californians which, though fairly well known, 
have not been cited as having a vital bearing on the 
Oriental issue. And again we must plunge into the psy- 
chology of peoples, for here lies the nub of the whole 
business. 



CHAPTER 20 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 

BOSTON, according to an ancient jest, is not a place 
but a state of mind, and this remark fits California. 
The wag who first perpetrated the line probably did not 
realize what a wealth of wisdom lay buried in the words. 
Unwittingly, he came amazingly close to defining true 
culture. For true culture is an organized set of clearly 
recognized desires the attaining of which has been worked 
out in a number of fairly definite group habits. People 
are cultivated when they have reflected upon their own 
natural impulses, wishes, ideals, and aspiration, have har- 
monized these to some degree, and have then worked out 
methods of satisfying them. The first requisite of estab- 
lishing any culture is to ''know your own mind," in the 
every-day sense of this phrase. The second requisite is 
to ascertain which of your many desires are reconcilable 
and which are irreconcilable, and to give up the latter 
in order that you may better achieve the former. The 
final requisite is to devise ways and means of achieving 
these. By long trying and testing, these ways and means 
eventually become clear and fixed habits. 

A culture may be horribly crude, as is that of the 
Hindu, or it may be refined, like that of old Boston. Its 
quality depends, of course, upon the intelligence, the in- 
genuity, and the will power of him who sets out to or- 

235 



236 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ganize liis wishes and life habits. But of all cultures 
high and low, one thing is equally true: Eaeli is a 
fairly complete system of life habits so closely interlocked 
and adjusted to one another that, once they are estab- 
lished in an adult, they can be broken do\vn only with 
great A^olence and injury. 

Every psychologist is familiar with this fact. It is no 
longer open to doubt. We know how hard it is to try 
to make over even one or two old habits in a man of 
thirty. If he is normal, his behavior has become so fixed 
that of his own volition he cannot drop an old manner 
and take up a new one. To make him do this, we must 
exert pressure upon him from without. We must curse 
him, exhort him, threaten to discharge him, drop him 
from good society, or deprive him of things which he 
needs in carrying on the old habit. There is only one 
instance in which the habit change can be effected hy the 
man himself, and this is not an exception to our general 
rule, but only an obscure case of it. If the habit gets him 
into trouble and he comes to recognize that it is the 
cause of his trouble, then he may set about to discard it. 
Bid he will do this only when the disturbance the habit 
causes is worse than the disturbance that surrendering it 
causes. For example, he may have fallen into alcoholism 
to such a degree that he is habitually late and dull in 
his business, slovenly in dress, and sociall}^ undesirable. 
He may be dropped from a club, he may lose a good job, 
and boys on the street may deride him. All of which 
comes into conflict with other habits and strong desires 
such as playing bridge with neighbor Smith, going to the 
theater with his wife and son, aspiring to become a di- 
rector of the company he works for, and so on. If these 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 237 

are strong, they may move him to cut out the drinking. 
But, as is well known, they usually have to be very 
strong if they are to have that result. 

We may put it in another manner to bring out its bear- 
ing on the Japanese issue in California. An established 
habit may be broken down only hy pressure, not by mere 
argument or any other play of ideas. The pressure may 
come from without, as in the case of the Allies compelling 
the Germans to give up their kaiser habit and affect the 
outer habits of democracy; or the pressure may come 
from within, as in the case of the Russians giving up 
their czar habit after the horrible catastrophes of the 
Carpathian campaigns revealed to the dullest muzhik 
that his czar habit was even worse than his vodka habit. 
Unless there is a severe and sustained irritation, discom- 
fort, or costly inefficiency which men recognize as the 
consequences of a habit, they are physically unable to 
break the latter. The loftiest moral philosophy will not 
shatter it. The most convincing logic will rebound from 
it like a rubber ball. 

How clearly this has appeared in the history of many 
noble campaigns to better humanity! Look at the rec- 
ord of alcoholism. For many years thousands of ear- 
nest men and women strained every nerve to persuade 
drinkers that their habit was immoral. They quoted the 
Scriptures. They appealed to the so-called ''better judg- 
ment" and the Christian conscience. But nothing hap- 
pened. The first great drive against the habit failed ut- 
terly, to the bewilderment of every original teetotaler. 
Some years afterward the appeal to reason and religion 
was dropped. A new appeal was made, this time to 
obvious and evil facts. The actual harm done by the 



238 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ordinary saloons was simply pointed out in statistics, in 
news stories, in pictures. The physiological effects of 
alcohol were published luridly and often, and, be it said, 
mendaciously. Hospitals and insane asylums and jails 
were ransacked for horrible examples, all of which were 
held up to public gaze. And finally the presidents and 
directors of our great industries were persuaded to make 
scientific tests, the outcome of which demonstrated that 
every employee of theirs who drank regularly was a poor 
investment. In conjunction with all this long campaign 
of proving that liquor was a real disturbance in life 
there ran the education of the rising generation. Boys 
and girls were shown the evils of alcoholism before they 
built up drink habits, and thus they fell into ways of 
abstinence naturally. Thus, by bringing immense eco- 
nomic and educational pressure to bear, and pointing 
out in minute detail where and how the habit was caus- 
ing harm in daily life and thwarting many high desires, 
the drive won, at least so far as legislation brings victory. 
If we had time, we might similarly recount the history 
of the whole Christian missionary movement in Asia and 
show how the same thing has occurred there. The well- 
meaning efforts to break down Asiatic life habits by 
passing around Bibles and teaching the Ten Command- 
ments and coaxing natives to church went on for many 
years with results so meager that finally the more intel- 
ligent missionaries themselves admitted that there was 
something profoundly wrong with their system. Not 
knowing modem psychology, they could not analyze it 
completely, but their common sense guided them in the 
right direction. They did not understand that the re- 
ligious and moral ideas they were talking at the Asiatics 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 239 

were in reality the mere verbal expression of a highly 
intricate set of life habits which grew up under peculiar 
conditions in the Mediterranean countries, and have 
been slowly and slightly changed in the course of many 
generations of European life. They did not realize that 
the written words of ethics and piety never were the 
cause of those habits, but only the subsequent expression 
of them. Neither did they know that the waj^s of the 
Asiatic were as deep as life itself, and that those colossal 
systems of personal and social habits could no more be 
altered by sermons and prayers than the tides of the Pa- 
cific can be altered by Christian Science. They could 
not see that the cultures of the Hindus, the Chinamen, 
and the Japanese were each an organization of hundreds 
of established nervous reactions as stable as your habit 
of hand-writing and your neighbor's habit of reading his 
morning newspaper. And they did not know that such 
habit systems break down only under enormous pressure 
from within or without, just as the habit of chewing to- 
bacco or going to church does. Thus misinformed, the 
entire first movement in foreign mission work was not 
only a total failure, it was a blunder that permanently 
injured Western culture in the eyes of the Orientals, as 
everybody now admits. Not until the workers took up 
social service and practical education did they begin to 
make a worthwhile impression upon Asia. And even 
then it is more than doubtful that they would have made 
the slightest headway had it not been for the tremendous 
and often outrageous pressure from without which the 
European powers exerted upon Asiatics to buy European 
goods and adopt European ways. 
Now what has all this to do with the crisis in Califor- 



240 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

nia? "Well, it brings us to the very heart of the whole 
matter. 

The crisis has not grown out of race prejudice in the 
ordinary sense of the term, and it is not merely economic, 
although economic factors are prominent in it. It is a 
conflict of two highly organized adult habits. Neither 
culture can merge into the other during the lifetime of 
the present adult whites and adult Japanese unless there 
is some tremendous pressure from within the members 
of one group or else some similar pressure brought to 
bear from without. 

There is no indication that pressure of either sort exists 
or is likely to arise. The Japanese are satisfied with their 
group and personal habits, and the Califomians are satis- 
fied with theirs. The Japanese cannot compel the Cali- 
fomians by external pressure to adopt the Japanese hab- 
its, nor can the Californians force the Japanese to adopt 
theirs. 

It would require a sizable book to describe the hun- 
dreds of habits involved in these two cultures, but there 
are some which must be pointed out. Only a trained 
psychologist will appreciate the depths to which some of 
these folk-ways sink in the nature of man. 

Californians, especially in the farming regions where 
the Japanese have appeared, are the most homogeneous 
group of the older American stocks in all the United 
States to-day. They are the descendants of the Argo- 
nauts and the other men of New England and the North 
Atlantic States who came in the great gold rush of 1849. 
These men were of the old hardy, adventuring type, the 
sort that England, and, to a lesser degree, Germany and 
France, sent forth in wave after wave ever since the days 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 241 

of Columbus. They were rough and ready, quick on the 
trigger, on the make, and as hard as nails, not always 
very ''nice folks" or agreeable in an argument, but ad- 
mirably adapted to the job of conquering the wilderness. 
Never were there more complete individualists than these 
pioneers. If they hadn't been constitutionally fond of 
going it alone, they never would have climbed aboard 
their prairie-schooners and trailed the setting sun. Nat- 
ural selection, therefore, filled California with the most 
''unsocial" inhabitants ever gathered in an isolated re- 
gion. Only in Australia do we find their like, and even 
there we find a marked difference in that early Austra- 
lians were convicts, and hence largely anti-social rather 
than merely unsocial. 

The individualism of the fathers has descended upon 
the sons. To-day California is the last stronghold of 
that elder American complex of habits. To be sure, the 
more primitive manifestations of it have disappeared. 
Men no longer pack their kits and strike off back coun- 
try in disgust whenever the railroad comes within twenty 
miles of their ranch. But they do resent routine labor 
in shops and factories, the time clock, efficiency experts, 
and personnel managers. This, at least, is the testimony 
of some observers in the San Francisco Bay industrial 
district. And to this dislike of discipline they trace some 
of the intensity of the many labor troubles that have 
scourged the Pacific coast for a full decade. 

We see the same rank individualism on the side of the 
property-owners and employers, too. Until the World 
War and the tremendous external pressure from the Fed- 
eral Government struck California, it is notorious that 
men in control of lumber-camps, mines, large ranches, 



242 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

and many industrial concerns ignored both the rights 
and the creature comforts of their employees to a scan- 
dalous degree. Filthy bunk-houses were provided for 
harvest hands. Bedding that swarmed with lice was the 
best the lumberjack got. Workers who came from a dis- 
tance were left to find transportation as best they could 
except when crops were in danger of spoiling through 
lack of quick harvesters. The notion of medical super- 
vision for rural and back-country laborers had not yet 
been born. All of this, and more, has been extensively 
proved by special investigators, both state and federal, 
and was published in official bulletins during the war. 
It does not prove any special depravity in the California 
employer. It merely demonstrates what every social psy- 
chologist knows is a universal law of human nature; 
namely, that the old habits which such men acquired 
thirty or forty years ago continue as long as some great 
force from within or without does not develop to shatter 
them. These men were doing what nearly all employers 
were doing fifty years ago, and the pressure to change 
struck California long after it had largely succeeded in 
Europe and in our own East. 

This same crude individualism in the old days led to 
land grabbing and the wholesale piracy of water rights. 
The evil effects produced by these abuses are continuing 
to poison political and rural life all over California. 
Three interests, the Miller & Lux Company, the Kern 
County Land Company, and the Southern Pacific Rail- 
road, still own more acres in the State than there are in 
the German Empire. Not many years ago a man on 
horseback starting from the northern boundary of the 
State, or even well over in Oregon, could ride to Mexico 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 243 

through the entire length of the State without getting off 
land owned by the Miller & Lux Company, which had 
as many men on horseback guarding its fourteen million 
acres from hunters, squatters and tramps as there were 
in the United States cavalry before the present war. 

Not even these figures, however, convey the true 
meaning of landlordism in California. It must be added 
that the early land grabbers naturally pounced upon the 
well watered tracts first of all, with the result that to- 
day more than one-half of all the land in California 
which has water sufficient for farming is in the hands of 
a dozen or two men and companies. Farm experts as- 
sure me that Henry Miller, of the Miller & Lux Com- 
pany, alone owns between one-fifth and one-sixth of all 
the irrigated acreage in the State. The Natomas Com- 
pany holds about 60,000 acres. The Kern County Land 
Company possesses not far from 125,000 acres. All of 
which is, to be sure, a mere trifle as compared either 
with the size of California or with the total holdings of 
these and other large landlords; but an ominous thing 
when we bear in mind that the real California, the place 
where men can make homes and develop the country 
permanently, is just these few thousand square miles 
where water flows. 

The history of land grabbing corruptions in California 
shows that in many of the best rural districts to-day the 
small farmer is still laboring under severe handicaps, 
thanks largely to grossly unjust laws regulating the dis- 
tribution of water for irrigation. Tax assessments are 
manipulated by the big land owners so that often land 
which, it is declared, could not be bought for $200 an 
acre is assessed at $13.90. In Kern County, which is 



244^ MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

owned almost entirely by the Kern County Land Com- 
pany, much land assessed at about $2 an acre sells for 
$200. 

The State Commission on Land Colonization says: 
"California has an immense area of fertile and unpeo- 
pled land . . . comparatively few settlers are coming 
here, and many who came in recent years have left. 
Costly advertising and still more costly personal solici- 
tations have not served to attract colonists. We have not 
found a single settler who, bringing with him only lim- 
ited capital, has been able to pay for his land in the time 
agreed upon in his contract." Is it to be wondered at 
that the big land holders are anxious to fill their estates 
with Chinese and Japanese? 

The plain truth is not pleasant but must be spoken. 
California — and I mean the real California, not the over- 
boomed vacationist Los Angeles nor busy, commercial 
San Francisco — is still a generation behind the rest of 
the country in its landlordism. These royal estates and 
a hundred others of princely extent and richness still are 
California. The Great Valley, which is the only possible 
center of large rural population, is filled with the horizon- 
wide holdings that were annexed, sometimes honestly but 
more often by murder and fraud, by the old pioneers and 
the sharpers who came slinking in behind them. The 
descendants of these adventurers and buccaneers domi- 
nate politics in many regions and naturally use their 
power to retain power. They retain the old pre-civilized 
contempt for the common laborer and the small farmer. 
Their outlook on life is admirably exhibited by one of 
their own spokesmen, the Los Angeles ''Times," which 
is owned by a family whose record of land dealings in 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 245 

California and Mexico and whose attitude toward the 
working classes make the Junkers of East Prussia seem 
more or less benign philanthropists. These people have 
strongly advocated the importation of Chinese coolies, 
for the blessed purpose of operating their estates. To 
quote the ''Times": 

"If a machine were to be invented which could do all the 
arduous work now performed by hand on the farms, it would 
be welcomed as a Godsend. That machine would mean in- 
creased production and a lowered cost of living. Then why 
the protest against emplojdng a human machine to do the 
work? Who would be injured if 1,000,000 Chinamen were 
brought to this country to work on the farms or where needed, 
and if 100,000 of them were to be emploj^ed in California? 
They would replace none of the white workers in California in- 
dustries. The only ones to be affected would be the Japanese 
farmers. This influx of Chinese workmen would break the 
Japanese corner on the food market. The workers would be 
able to live for less. The grocery and vegetable bill of the 
average Los Angeles housewife would be cut in half in a 
year; and not a single white person in Los Angeles would be 
thrown out of employment. Why are we shrinking from a 
solution of the labor problem which would be of such general 
benefits 

What the hypothetical reduction of food prices would 
do to the small American farmer, deponent sayeth not. 
And for the excellent reason that he does not care. The 
California Junker loses no sleep over the woes of the 
white man with fifty or a hundred acres. All he wants 
is to make California into an old Mexico, a place of stu- 
pendous haciendas managed by an expert or two and 
tilled by thousands of peons and coolies at a dollar a 
day — or less, if the scoundrels can be persuaded to take 



246 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

it. As he owns whole towns and even counties, he is a 
law unto himself, exactly like the petty Oriental poten- 
tate. And the American who ventures to criticize or 
amend his enactments must expect a traitor 's fate. The 
history of California, even down to the present, is 
smeared crimson with the blood of decent, freedom-loving 
Americans shot down in ambush by cow punchers and 
greasers in the hire of some land-rich thug who disliked 
being sued in his own hired court before his own hired 
judge and jury and there exposed as a crook. 

How strongly this has colored the small farmer's out- 
look is revealed in the remark made to me by a Kern 
County farmer last summer. "If we fellow^s could only 
hang about three hundred hand-picked land crooks," said 
he soberly, ''and then make Elwood Mead dictator for 
life and give him all the hemp he needed and a firing 
squad, California would be fit to join the United States 
in a few years. Right now it 's a rich man's heaven and 
a poor man's hell." 

I do not venture an opinion on this genial program. 
I pass it on as evidence showing up the psychology of the 
crisis. The small farmer of the Great Valley, so far as I 
have seen him and listened to him, certainly regards the 
influx of Japanese as a powerful aid in enabling the old 
Junkers to get cheap labor with which to work their 
estates, thereby underselling the hundred-acre American 
and later selling off tracts to the Japanese as fast as they 
save enough to buy. At the end of the process, the small 
farmer foresees himself and all his kind squeezed be- 
tween a horde of small Oriental farmers and the old 
estates, all manned with a constantly replenished stream 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 247 

of Japanese who, for their first two or three years in our 
country, will work hard in order to get ahead. 

This prospect makes the small farmer inclined to pack 
up and get out the minute he sees powerfully organized 
groups of Japanese settling around his ranch. His ex- 
perience with powerful groups has taught him that they 
bring bad luck to the money in his jeans. He expects 
them to be crooks. He expects them to play politics 
against him. And he does not expect much help from 
the Government or from his neighbors in holding his own 
against such intruders. This habit of mind and action, 
while unquestionably weakening fast in more progressive 
districts, still lingers in its old, purity and power in the 
Great Valley. 

The same pioneer habit which led men to take the law 
into their own hands and to form vigilance committees 
has lately reappeared in the anti-Japanese movement. 
During 1920, in many localities of California, citizens 
who disliked the Japanese imitated the men of '49 and 
"served notice" on the intruders. The case of the Se- 
bastopol farmers is fairly typical. A rancher by the 
name of Holm received a flattering offer for his twenty- 
acre apple-orchard from one JJyeda, a Japanese. He ac- 
cepted the offer, engaged an attorney to draw up the 
papers, then went to the local bank president with regard 
to the deed. At this stage of the game some of the Amer- 
ican Legion members heard of it and took the matter in 
hand. They told Holm and his attorney that the deal 
could not go through. And it did not. Anybody who 
knows California realizes that the would-be buyer acted 
wisely in not appealing to the law, for the rougher ele- 



248 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ments of the population are coming to show the same su- 
periority to the law which we have seen for many years 
all over the South in the Southerners' dealings wdth the 
negro. 

Contrast with all this the Japanese habits of submerg- 
ing oneself utterly in the group and relying on the Gov- 
ernment for everything. The yellow man is as utterly 
a socialist as the native son is an individualist. We have 
pointed out elsewhere the grip these social habits have 
upon the ordinary man in Japan. The Japanese them- 
selves regard it as a national trait and have a common 
name for it, Seifumanno-Shugi. It rests on the ancient 
rule of the family and the clan which prevailed for thou- 
sands of years. We have shown how the Japanese Gov- 
ernment owns and manages railways, steamship lines, 
postal and telegraph and telephone systems, gas, water, 
and electric-light plants, the tobacco business, the salt 
monopoly, the camphor industry, and how it even domi- 
nates the management of the banks and many large man- 
ufacturing concerns. And we have told how the Japa- 
nese farmers in California come from certain rural clans, 
bring their clan customs with them, and pool their for- 
tunes and their services under the rule of the clan lead- 
ers. 

Now, this profound difference in going at tasks has 
already led to much friction in California. Look at the 
way Japanese districts have built up. Easterners do not 
realize the team play the Japanese use in this enterprise, 
and still less the psychological effect upon the whites in 
the region ''invaded." Elwood Mead has investigated 
many of these developments, and finds that what happens 
is something like this: a few Japanese come to work in 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 249 

the neighborhood for a year or two, during which time 
they study the soils and crops and learn which tracts are 
the best. Next, backed by members of their clan who 
have not yet appeared, they lease some of the desirable 
acreage, paying, if necessary, a rental far far above the 
sums a white man would pay. All over the State they 
have thus forced up the rental value abnormally. 

Almost invariably, the white owner of the land is de- 
lighted to make so much profit, so he signs the lease con- 
tract. From that time on, the Japanese begin bobbing 
up, and in a short time they have picked up all the good 
rentable land about a village. They create their own co- 
operative buying and selling organization. They fill the 
public schools with their children. They set up native 
schools. They practise Buddhism. As soon as possible, 
they begin bu^^ing farm land either in the names of their 
American-born babies or else through corporations which 
easily evade the intent of the law prohibiting aliens from 
acquiring title to real estate. Once they possess such 
land in quantity, they begin to force down the rents they 
have been paying for leased farms ; and as many Amer- 
ican farmers have, by this stage of the game, left the dis- 
trict in disgust, they find this fairly easy. In some 
neighborhoods, rents have first been driven up to three or 
four times the prevailing scale, only to be driven down 
later, after foothold had been secured, well below the 
earlier level. And by reason of the presence of a Japa- 
nese colony, the market value of such acreage drops 
sharply, for no whites will ever move into a Japanese dis- 
trict. Thus the Japanese manage to buy up all they 
wish at a bargain. 

In these methods no consistent American can find a 



250 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

moral wrong. They are not nearly so questionable as 
scores of business practices favored by our own commer- 
cial classes. They are shrewd : that is the worst one can 
say of them. But the essential fact is that they anger 
the whites who have been the victims of the habit. No 
man likes to see the value of his farm dwindle as the 
result of alien neighbors. No man likes to see his chil- 
dren in school with a crowd of foreign children who speak 
their own language and herd apart from his own. No 
man likes to see his old friends move away one by one, 
leaving him alone in the midst of people whose tongue 
he does not speak and with whom he can have no social 
intercourse, even if he tries to. And no farmer ^s wife 
likes to be left without women to gossip with. These 
hundred and one daily little habits are life. 

I know that many Easterners and some Califomians 
will say that, underneath all this dislike, there certainly 
runs a strain of vicious race prejudice. This, however, 
cannot well be defended. For Californians themselves 
have unwittingly supplied pretty conclusive evidence that 
race feeling has little or nothing to do with the whole 
matter. 

Let me tell the story of the Fresno Armenians. It 
is enlightening. 

THE CASE OF THE ARMENIANS 

Climb aboard an auto anywhere in the upper San 
Joaquin Valley and, working northward slowly, keep an 
eye on the waj^side signs. Before you reach the mile- 
post that tells you Fresno is fifty miles away, you will 
begin to encounter the following legend: 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 251 



NO JAPS OR ARMENIANS WANTED! 



You will see it in conspicuous letters in front of ranch, 
houses and sometimes at the ends of side roads that lead 
far back to the rims of the great flats. If you are a 
stranger, you will wonder why the authors of these 
brusque warnings have coupled the Japanese and the 
long-suffering Armenians thus. And if you are an in- 
quisitive wayfarer and hobnob with the natives, you will 
soon come upon the answer to your question. When you 
do, you will see the signs in a new light. You will see in 
them an abridged treatise on economics and social psy- 
chology. You will understand many things about the 
Japanese crisis which have been dark — or else darkened. 

The facts behind the signs prove conclusively that the 
agitation against the Japanese people in California is 
not founded measurably upon a genuine race prejudice 
comparable to the feeling which has prompted many 
Texas villagers to post notices at the ends of their main 
street commanding: "Nigger! Move on!" The Ar- 
menian is a white man. Why should he be coupled with 
the Japanese in the hostile thoughts of the San Joaquin 
Valley farmers? Let me give you the farmers' own an- 
swers to this question, as I got it from a number of them. 

In the Fresno district there are, so the farmers state, 
about 16,000 Armenians. (This figure I have not been 
able to check up in census reports, but it is certain that 
the number is high in any event.) Coming from a land 
where fig culture has been practised for centuries, these 
aliens brought with them an unusual degree of skill in 
handling tree, fruit, and the merchandising thereof. 



252 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Now the fig is a peculiarly difficult proposition, for a 
number of purely technical reasons into which we need 
not go here, beyond saying that the fruit is easily dam- 
aged, both on the tree and in the picking, does not keep 
at all well, and involves much delicate hand labor. Some 
years ago there was a fig boom in various parts of Cali- 
fornia, during which many Americans who had pleasant 
boyhood memories about one's ''vine and fig tree," and 
also wanted to make the enormous profits which the land 
boomers assured them were as easy as eating figs, set out 
thousands of trees. The Armenians began coming in 
and, so allege a few citizens, sat back and watched the 
proceedings with obvious interest. 

Presently some of the new fig enthusiasts became dis- 
couraged. Figs seemed to show evil inclinations to de- 
velop sundry diseases, to drop off from their appointed 
branches prematurely, and to spoil over night. Also 
labor was harder and harder to get when wanted. And, 
so I am informed, only five or six years ago, you might 
have bought figs around Fresno at about a fifth of their 
present price, and fig acreage was being offered at all 
sorts of prices from $250 to $500 an acre. Then the 
onlooking Armenians began buying in. Of course, they 
already had developed considerable holdings of their own 
and had been prospering mightily ; thus they were finan- 
cially well fixed for annexing ever more acres. 

The Americans went back to alfalfa, hens, or the 
movies. The Armenians nursed figs. And the figs grew 
lustily. The Armenians multiplied in numbers and in 
wealth. They bought vast limousines and racing cars. 
They wore fine silks and smoked heavy cigars. And with 
prosperity they seem, so it is alleged, to have developed a 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 253 

feeling of superiority and aloofness toward the Ameri- 
cans which the Americans do not enjoy. As two men 
put it to me, ' ' whenever you see an auto breaking all the 
speed laws around Fresno and running over babies, you 
may bank on it that there 's an Armenian at the wheel. ' ' 
Furthermore, it must be added sorrowfully but in the 
interest of history, most of the men I chanced to speak 
to on the whole subject declared that the business meth- 
ods of the Armenians fully justified the Turks in their 
treatment of those people for the past century or two. 
From school teachers down to farm hands came the same 
verdict : the Armenian is altogether too sharp in his buy- 
ing and selling, and he works with others of his own kind 
to outwit or even to defraud the native. There is no 
need of going into unpleasant details on this point. 
Everybody who has collected facts about the Armenians 
is only too familiar with this indictment, which has be- 
come a part of the folklore of the entire Mediterranean 
countrj^ where for untold generations the saying has 
been current, in a number of variants: ''It takes two 
Italians to outwit a Greek, two Greeks to outwit a Jew, 
and two Jews to outwit an Armenian." 

The fact is clear. San Joaquin Valley farmers dislike 
the Armenian because he has been shrewder than they — 
often unscrupulously so — and because he has organized 
his own kind in economic competition against the older 
peoples of the land and because their losses have in many 
cases been his gain, as in the instance of the fig lands 
which, in the past few years, have risen to as high as 
$2,000 an acre in value — the very same acres which 
Americans sold in disgust a few years earlier for $250 to 
$500. 



254 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Against the Armenian it is impossible to raise the cry 
of the hostile race. He is as much a white man as any 
of the mingled bloods of the Near East and probably 
more white than many of the Sicilians we welcome to our 
shores. So in the criticisms of him we get the simple 
truth more readily than in the case of the Japanese. As 
we have elsewhere shown, the main tide of feeling against 
the yellow man is not his yellowness; it is his business 
energy, skill, persistence, and team work, along with 
which goes his evident sense of pride, or even superiority. 
The race cry is, in nine out of ten cases, a simple camou- 
flage that saves the face of the complainant. It is un- 
pleasant to admit that any stranger from overseas is 
smarter than you are. So, when you want to drive him 
out of his victorious competition with you, it is more 
satisfactory to say that East is East and West is West, 
and the twain can never meet. 

Once more we are brought back to the same old 
things — the deep conflict between group habits of work 
and living. It is not a mere local issue. The California 
crisis is only one of a thousand aspects of a world-wide 
struggle that will go on as long as human progress is 
possible. 

California's easy-going habits 

Turn, now, to another point of contrast. The outward 
and visible behavior of men is, and must be, the basis 
of all mutual understanding and approachment, and in 
this respect Californians and Japanese are miles apart. 
The Californian is a highly expressive person. He is 
frank and outspoken in the commoner exchange of ideas 
and feelings. In the higher forms he exhibits a wealth 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 255 

and variety of artistic expression conspicuously above 
that of his countrymen over the mountains. California 
notoriously produces more poets, more artists, more sing- 
ers, more actors, and more authors to the square inch 
than any other part of North America. As a result of 
this, she has attracted many such from the East, thereby 
increasing the natural selection, the number, and influ- 
ence of this mental type. Art has come to play an aston- 
ishing part in the daily life of the people. It receives 
more attention in the public schools and the universities 
than anywhere in the East, and its many forms are cul- 
tivated with assiduity in half a hundred towns and art 
colonies. California is to America what Italy used to be 
to Europe, in aspiration at least, if not always in fact. 

This trait, like any other, sometimes develops in a use- 
less or even injurious form. In California it frequently 
plays havoc with the newspapers. Nowhere else in our 
country do editors and reporters allow their personal emo- 
tions and prejudices to disturb their thinking and cor- 
rupt the news so grossly and so often as in the Golden 
State. Outbursts of extravagant enthusiasm, red hate, 
and lyric political oratory are as common here as they 
are rare in New York and Chicago, outside of the Hearst 
papers, which are a California product in every respect. 
Journalists are familiar with the undue attention given 
in the Los Angeles and San Francisco papers to domestic 
and other petty happenings that have only an emotional 
value, and also with their amazing distortion of the sim- 
plest, most straightforward events. A notable instance 
of this latter was the absurd and infantile twisting and 
lying about the Democratic National Convention in San 
Francisco by the newspapers of that town. The passions 



256 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

of cheap politics and personal spites corrupted the news 
columns of all save one paper so disgracefully that the 
National Committee felt constrained to publish a protest. 
To the psychologist this inability to control one's emo- 
tions and passions in such a simple matter as reporting a 
convention is partly a phase of that same artistic expres- 
siveness which we have pointed out. 

This weakness of the artistic temperament has, oddly 
enough, been a great hindrance in the way of solving the 
Japanese question. It has caused American readers east 
of the Rockies to laugh at the hysterical Calif ornians and 
their fantastic charges against the Japanese. What most 
of us have been reading in California newspapers for the 
last fifteen years about the Japanese has largely war- 
ranted the conclusion, now generally held, that Califor- 
nians are, as '*The Nation" has said, ** suffering from a 
bad case of nerves." 

The editor of this volume has inspected several hun- 
dred California newspaper reports and editorials about 
the Japanese over the last ten-year period, and finds a 
painfully high percentage of nonsense, malice, and hys- 
teria in them. One recent instance may be cited to show 
the total lack of intelligence on the part of the editors and 
reporters alike in dealing with a difficult and delicate po- 
litical problem. 

In Jul}^, 1920, several deaths occurred in and around 
San Francisco, which, according to some physicians, 
might have been caused by the eating of unclean vege- 
tables. A bright editor sent a bright reporter out to 
cover the story. The reporter, if we may judge from 
subsequent journalistic events, did not interview the phy- 
sicians minutely, if at all; he hastened with that uner- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 257 

ring instinct for news which is the glory of his craft, 
straight to the places where vegetables come from and 
investigated them. Naturally, the vegetables were under 
the tutelage of some Japanese, as nearly all vegetables 
are in that State. The reporter looked into the methods 
of these sons of the soil in bringing up the vegetables. 
He found a shocking state of affairs. It appeared that 
the detestable Oriental was encouraging the vegetables 
by applying to them liquid sewage and manure. 

This scandal got into the front pages of the newspapers 
the very next day. Later it was elaborated, and edi- 
torials were woven around it, showing that the Japanese 
and their filthy habits are a menace to the white race and 
must be driven out. Shall Californians die of typhoid 
that Japanese may got rich selling lettuce and onions? 
This was no light matter. It was soon taken up and 
seriously discussed by editors, and even a scientific dis- 
sertation was written by a young man who was toiling 
for a Ph.D. degree at the Universit^^ of California. 

For ten days after the event I carefully watched 
the development of this topic in the California papers. 
Nowhere did there appear the obvious and crushing 
reply to this vicious nonsense. Not an editor, so far 
as could be seen, had enough interest in the truth to 
call attention to the fact that all intensive farmers in 
Italy, Germany, France, England, and the United States 
have been applying all the liquid sewage and manure 
they could get to their vegetables ever since the inven- 
tion of carrots. Not an editor mentioned that the high- 
est agricultural experts recommended the practice. Not 
an editor mentioned that what the unfortunate deaths 
really meant was, not that the Japanese gardeners are a 



258 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

menace, but simply that some San Francisco kitchen help- 
ers are slovens. They should have washed the vegetables 
properly, and didn't. Probably they were reading the 
thrilling newspaper tales of murder and adultery while 
rinsing the lettuce. 

You may say that this case is trivial. Taken by itself, 
it is ; but it is only one of a million everyday acts which 
make up the habitual behavior of men. And this habit- 
ual behavior is the stuff that culture and standards of 
morality are made of. 

How far the Japanese is from such emotional habits! 
A more impassive and imperturbable human being never 
lived than the average man from Nippon, unless it be 
the Chinese coolie. Unlike the upper-class Japanese, 
who loves laughter and wit, the peasant is as stolid as 
the German countryman. Insulted, he does not rage; 
amused, he seldom smiles; exalted, he does not toss his 
hat into the air and whoop; conversed with, he says no 
more than is needful to convey his opinion on the mat- 
ter in hand. Now this can create but one impression on 
the white man ; to him it means that the Japanese is con- 
cealing his feelings and thoughts for some purpose. For 
the white man cannot imagine his doing it unless there 
were some special reason to do so. The Westerner does 
not hide his feelings and impulses except when he is 
playing poker. No wonder that the Califomian feels 
uneasy and suspicious in his dealings with the Japanese ! 
That is how anybody with an expressive temperament 
must feel in the presence of a man whose face is a mask 
and whose words are always few, polite, and precise. 

The next contrast is one which^ derives from the eco- 
nomic peculiarities of California. Without checking up 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 259 

the statistics of the matter, we may hazard the statement 
that California is the richest region in the world, both 
in potential resources per capita and in the goods avail- 
able and enjoyed by her citizens. To get a faint idea of 
her high standard of living, imagine that everybody now 
living on the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Florida 
and for one hundred miles inland were driven out, and 
the entire stretch presented to the inhabitants of New 
York City. The happy profit-sharing that would ensue 
would resemble life in California on its material side, at 
least. An even year-round climate, rich farms, immense 
grazing-lands for sheep and cattle, vast forests, an ocean 
of fish, lakes of petroleum, and many mines, all combine 
to make life easy. The cost of living in California is 
still relatively low, despite wars and inflations of the once 
honest dollar. Both the necessities and the luxuries are 
easy to win as compared with the East. The fortunes 
made by California miners, farmers, cattlemen, and ship- 
builders since 1914 are colossal, and this wealth has been 
spread over more or less the entire white population. 

Now, such prosperity and easy living begets liberality 
and free spending. It also encourages an easy-going 
disposition. These very traits stood out prominent in 
Californians long before the war. They doubtless began 
in the days of long ago, when the Argonauts washed their 
first buckets of gold out of the river sands. To-day they 
are an integral part of local culture. Outside of Los 
Angeles, which is not the old California at all, but simply 
Des Moines plus Charlie Chaplin, Californians are gen- 
erous and life-loving to a fault. The ''treating habit," 
which has all but disappeared in the East, still prevails. 
Everybody is always dining out or going somewhere on 



260 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

a "hike" or a picnic or an automobile tour. On almost 
any highway you can come upon a family in an ancient 
fliv^'Cr that is working for a week or two picking grapes, 
then loafing for a spell, and jogging along the road 'to 
Elsewhere. On the trains, everybody talks to everybody 
else, swaps pickles and chocolate cake out of their lunch 
boxes, and talks politics with the conductor. They are 
all of one big family. They take life fairly easy, and 
money, too. While I was visiting a small interior 
town to inspect a Japanese settlement, the hotel-keeper 
casually requested of me the loan of a hundred dol- 
lars for three days. He was buying a piece of prop- 
erty, and unexpectedly found himself short of the re- 
quired cash to that amount, so he struck the first guest 
in sight. When he paid back the loan, which he did pre- 
cisely when he agreed to, his thanks were quite as casual 
as the original request, though freely expressed. All of 
which indicated that he looked upon it as natural and 
proper for transient guests to be thus free and easy with 
their funds. What 's a hundred dollars between Califor- 
nians 1 

Thrift simply does not exist ; or if it does, people con- 
ceal it as though it were a detestable vice. In fact, 
working classes look down upon it as disgraceful. 
Around San Francisco you will hear the scathing phrase, 
**You 're as tight as an Easterner." This well estab- 
lished expression speaks volumes, and it throws light 
upon the Calif ornian 's dislike of his Japanese visitors. 

For the Japanese is a Scotchman when it comes to 
thrift, and he is not a shade more easy-going than the 
Russian Jew. He is "on the make." He works from 
eleven to sixteen hours a day. He eats plain food and 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 261 

little of it, at least until he has made his pile. And, in 
the words of the old saw, he *' saves his money and buys 
a farm. ' ^ In all of this, of course, he is doing what most 
of our immigrants from Europe do during their first ten 
years in America. Like them, the Japanese does it for 
the wholly laudable purpose of improving his lot in life 
and providing for his children. Were he to work in the 
East, nobody would pay the slightest attention to these 
habits, for the East is familiar with them, is forced to 
practise them, and is moreover cosmopolitan in its judg- 
ments. But with the Californian it is different, and un- 
avoidably so. These tight habits, which develop properly 
in a highly undesirable habitat where people must slave 
for the necessities of life, are not called for by his en- 
vironment. Hence they are to the Californian unnatu- 
ral, incongruous, and undesirable. 

We must look, last of all, at a potent influence which 
neither the Californians nor the Japanese, so far as I 
know, have ever recognized. It is the climate. My own 
observations convince me that it plays an important part 
in creating opportunities for the Japanese and also in 
causing friction. 

Every Californian knows, of course, that there is no 
such thing as- a California climate. Every mile east and 
west or up and down lands one in a different weather 
zone. California weather is like California soil — 
"spotted" to a degree that the Easterner cannot real- 
ize. There are, however, certain large districts in which 
fairly uniform conditions prevail, and by far the largest 
of these is the Great Valley, which embraces the immense 
alluvial plains of the San Joaquin and Sacramento 
Rivers. As you proceed from south to north here, you 



262 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

pass from extreme heat and dryness to considerable heat 
and drj^ness. The winters are delightful, the summers 
long and relentless; and the real estate boomer's familiar 
assurance that ''you don't feel the heat, because the air 's 
so dry, you know," never seems very consoling after the 
fourth or fifth day. 

Now, the bulk of Japanese farmers will be found in 
the central and southern parts of the Valley. And most 
of the others are either around Los Angeles or else in the 
Imperial Valley, where the climate is either as hot as in 
the Great Valley or considerably hotter. There they 
thrive and are happy. There they encounter the angri- 
est opposition from the small American farmers. As we 
have already seen, the trouble grows largely out of the 
Japanese willingness, if not desire, to work from twelve 
to sixteen hours a day when employed as a farm hand, 
and to make wife and children do likewise, as soon as the 
immigrant gets hold of a place of his own. The Ameri- 
can farm hand resents being driven at any such pace, 
and the American farm owner feels pretty much the same 
way about working his own acres. They cling to a more 
leisurely standard of living. And one cause of their 
clinging is the peculiar effect of the climate. 

Those who have, like Mr. Ellsworth Huntington, stud- 
ied carefully the ways various temperatures and humidi- 
ties influence the human body and its behavior, have 
often remarked upon the swift enervation induced by 
excessive dryness and heat. They have also called atten- 
tion to the slowing down of both mental and physical 
activity in climates of great equability. It is surpris- 
ingly easy to confirm these statements in any of the re- 
gions where the Japanese have settled thickly. I have 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 263 

talked with physicians, newspaper men, farmers, school 
teachers, clergymen, and social workers in San Bernar- 
dino, Riverside, Los Angeles, Fresno, Stockton, and Sac- 
ramento, as well as in smaller places; and, with the 
rather obvious exception of the few professional boomers 
who would honestly swear that every square inch of the 
grand old State was just perfect, nearly everybody testi- 
fied in one manner or another to the sweet indolence 
which California air and sun breed. Indeed, many per- 
sons insisted that this was one of the chief attractions 
of the State ; and there can be no doubt that this is cor- 
rect, for certain types of people who come to enjoy life or 
to recover their health. 

' ' The first two years, I was full of energy, " is a typi- 
cal confession. "But after that I wanted to take things 
easy, and I did." Or, as a Fresno farmer puts it: "I 
can stand just about so many months of it on my ranch. 
Then I have to light out for San Francisco, to smell the 
fog and get a little ginger back into my blood." This 
last, by the way, is the regular practice of the well-to-do 
ranchers of the Great Valley. And a botanist engaged in 
agricultural research for many years, off and on, states 
that his journal always shows a marked decline in the 
amount of work accomplished after a few months in 
cloudless days of sun and even, warm nights. 

All this suggests strongly that the interior valleys of 
California, great and small alike, can never be, in the 
fullest sense, a white man's country. They come closer 
to being it than the tropics, of course; and I incline to 
believe that they are measurably more hospitable to the 
race than the Gulf Coast is. But, if the white man can- 
not do an honest day's work in the fields, be the season 



264 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

what it may, he labors under a handicap that in the long 
run of generations will surety deliver his rich, hot plains 
into the hands of a sun-loving folk, it may be the negro, 
the negroid Sicilian, the Mexican Indian, or the South 
American. The one tremendous fact in his favor is the 
nearness of relief from the heat ; an automobile run of a 
few hours lands him either in the high mountains or on 
the chill seashore. Yet it is not the laborer who may 
thus fly a hundred miles whenever he feels languid. 
This is the privilege of the rich land owner. Those who 
till the soil will ever be bound closely to it, unless some 
now inconceivable invention makes travel as cheap as 
sitting still. 

Now, the Japanese have not been in the interior val- 
leys long enough to warrant sweeping conclusions as to 
their fitness there. But we can say that, as they them- 
selves have boasted, they have gone into regions of greai 
heat, such as the Imperial Valley and the Delta country, 
and have for ten years or longer worked as they used to 
work in cool Japan. We can also say that presumably 
a small-bodied stock like these men and women would 
endure heat more readily than the large-boned, full- 
fleshed American type. Furthermore, the Japanese tend 
to be high-strung and given to driving themselves hard. 
It might then fairly be supposed that a certain degree of 
enervation would be beneficial to them. All of which, 
while proving nothing, does strongly point toward the 
view that the Japanese are somewhat better fitted to 
inland California than we Americans are. Whether this 
is demonstrable or not, there can be no doubt that the 
Japanese like the country and have as yet given no indi- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CRISIS 265 

cation of an unfavorable reaction, except in the abnormal 
tropic heat of Imperial. And the effect this has upon 
their competition with the white is conspicuous. 

We might go on and show like contrasts of habits in 
matters of domestic life, such as the treatment of women 
and children, in matters of politics and religion, and so 
on ; but we have presented enough to make clear our con- 
tention that it is at many points in the whole system of 
established habits of work and play and social intercourse 
that the Oriental and the Californian diverge with such 
sharpness as to make mutual understanding exceedingly 
hard. 

Here the highest standard of living in the world and 
one of the lowest meet and compete in a region which is 
abundantly able to maintain the former. And here the 
most highly inbred Anglo-Saxon culture encounters the 
most inbred Mongolian culture, with resulting divergen- 
cies of habit and judgment at almost every point. 

We cannot deal with such a conflict by asking which 
culture is the better, and then recommending the one we 
choose. Men's habits remain unperturbed in the face of 
such juggling of ideas. 

Nor can we get ahead by relying upon any old doc- 
trines of politics and diplomacy. That method has 
proved the ruin of Europe, and it will bring disaster 
upon America if we do not stamp it out in short order. 
Social policies of the future must be shaped more and 
more for the direct advantage of the people in the region 
to which the policies apply. In the face of tangible 
and desired advantages, such catch-phrases as '^race- 
equality," ''impartial justice," and even "personal lib- 



266 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

erty" must not prevail. What men need and the world 
in which they must work out their salvation are both too 
intricate and too subtle to be thought of, and still less to 
be managed, by the vague ideas of political philosophers 
and conventional moralists. 
How, then, shall we proceed? 



BOOK IV 
HOW TO DEAL WITH THE CRISIS 



CHAPTER 21 
OUR NATIONAL POLICY 

ON WHAT MUST IT BE BUILT? 

DIFFICULTIES as vast as those involved in the Ori- 
ental crisis cannot be overcome until the United 
States has worked out a clear and sound national policy. 
Now, we are not here concerned with the bewildering 
task of computing such a policy. That is work for a 
generation of statesmen, and we haven't the statesmen 
as yet. What can and must be done at once, however, is 
to bring together the more obvious fundamental facts on 
which a national policy must eventually be based, if it 
is to be intelligent and fair. We shall speak here only 
of such facts as would shape our policy in the Japanese 
questions. 

These facts, as we have indicated, are of two sorts : 

1. — Facts about the world as we find it to-day and must 
expect to find it to-morrow, and 

2. — Facts about the needs and the desires of mankind. 

Could all the important facts in these two fields be col- 
lected and clearly understood, a group of business men 
and experts in law, administration, and social affairs 
could, in the course of a few years, work out a pretty com- 
plete outline of a national policy. This policy would be 
nothing more nor less than the technic of attaining 
through governmental channels and by moral ways and 

269 



270 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

means, everything that the American people want and 
can get best through such channels. 

Let us see first what the American people need and 
what they desire over and above strict needs. Having 
settled this much, we shall proceed through the rest of 
this volume to inspect some of the outstanding conditions 
and tendencies in the world in which those needs and 
desires must somehow find their gratification. 

It may not be out of place to state emphatically here 
that the study we shall make of American needs is purely 
realistic. We look upon the appetites and desires of 
the typical city-dweller whose budget we are going to 
investigate in precisely the same manner as a biologist 
watches and records the appetites of a rabbit and the im- 
pulses of a dog to prefer a hunk of fresh meat to a dry 
crust of bread. We mal^e, for the time being, the scien- 
tific assumption that the surest way of discovering the 
nature of man is to watch minutely man's actual behavior 
under the actual conditions of ordinary life, for man as 
an organism has developed his peculiarities in active 
relation to this complex environment as a whole. While 
we may learn something through a study of some of his 
traits isolated and manipulated under control conditions, 
we learn most in the other way. 

This scientific assumption carries with it another one 
which is frequently overlooked, especially by those who 
incline for one reason or another to exalt the higher and 
nobler traits of mankind. We assume, at least as a mat- 
ter of sound procedure and first hypothesis, that the rela- 
tive 'power and consequence of man^s many appetites 
desires, and aspirations is roughly, hut most reliably, 
measured hy the degree to which each of them shapes 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 271 

his actual 'behavior from moment to moment in everyday 
affairs. This is the rule of common sense. And it is 
the rule of all seientLfic approach, just because it is the 
simplest of all conceivable hypotheses. In holding it, we 
do not deny that it may be subject to many subsequent 
corrections as a result of discoveries. But we do hold 
that, until such corrections are forced upon it by clear 
scientific evidences and arguments, it would be highly 
illogical to qualify it. 

From this it follows that, until positive evidence to 
the contrary has been adduced, we hold that what any 
American really wants can be discovered approximately 
from what he tries to get, from how he spends his time, 
and from the way he spends his money. If there are 
such things as American ideals that are genuine and not 
mere talk, they will make themselves manifest in the 
family budget and in the work and play of father, mother 
and children. If such a family is found to spend all of 
its income and all of its free time joy-riding in an ex- 
pensive automobile, we shall not take very seriously its 
protestations that it is sincerely interested in helping the 
starving Armenians and would like to do something for 
the downtrodden Mexican peons if it only could. Such 
alleged ideals we shall measure by their actual efficiency 
in getting results. 

This method, I know, has seldom been followed by our 
political philosophers. Only our ward politicians have 
had the common sense to adopt it. When they hand 
around free turkeys on Christmas and give the boys of 
the neighborhood jobs, they disclose a correct under- 
standing of what people expect of the Government and 
its laws. They want results. They want them, first of 



272 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

all, in the form of food and jobs that pay well. And in 
this they are wholly right. 

Our political philosophers have been telling us for 
many years that men are passionately devoted to liberty. 
The whole record of the war proves that they are not. 
They will cling to any despot or scoundrel who gives 
them plenty of food and a warm suit of clothes ; and, as 
every observer in Central Europe to-day testifies, the 
masses would gladly go on living off the bounty of the 
American relief societies indefinitely and allow us to do 
as we pleased with their shadowy political rights, so long 
as the daily dole was forthcoming. They are all like the 
English sailor I met aboard a freighter docking at Mon- 
treal. To the officer who asked him his nationality, he 
said: '' I 'm from Lunnon, mate. But my country is 
the one that gives me the best berth. ' ' 

Whoever dares look the facts unabashed in the face 
finds a similar state of affairs in every other classic po- 
litical ideal from democracy down to religious freedom. 
In real life, men use democratic forms only as a means 
to attain or to retain some simple desired set of daily 
habits; and they tolerate a degree of religious freedom 
only in so far as the practice of it does not interfere with 
their own elemental ways of life, as our suppression of 
Mormon polygamy and Christian Science treatment of 
contagious diseases has proved. 

Endless confusion has grown out of the pleasant and 
courteous habit of believing that people mean what they 
say. The man of intellectual inclinations always falls 
victim to this error. To him words and ideas are impor- 
tant. Out of them he erects glittering systems and 
theories. The statesman, however, must regard ihe utter- 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 273 

ances of mankind precisely as the biologist and psycholo- 
gist do, namely, as partial symptoms of a physical and 
mental condition which is fully revealed — if ever — 
only through the human behavior of him who speaks. 

AMERICAN NEEDS 

It is an established fact that what any man needs is 
determined within a wide range by where he lives, by the 
kind of work he is doing, and by the number of social 
influences that operate to compel him to maintain certain 
standards of conduct. The true needs of a negro farmer 
in Georgia differ widely from those of a shipyard worker 
in San Francisco ; so it would be hard to strike an aver- 
age, and harder yet to assert that such an average rep- 
resented anything real. There is one thing that we can 
do, however, and that is to choose the needs of the largest 
American class that has been carefully studied and to 
let this stand as more or less typical. Fortunately, we 
have at hand excellent material of this sort in the many 
analyses of workingmen's budgets which have been made 
by various investigators. In the Appendix you will find 
a number of these brought together and contrasted with 
one another, as well as with Japanese budgets; and of 
these we shall choose one of the most recent, namely, a 
study of ''the cost of maintaining a family at a level of 
health and reasonable comfort" which was prepared by 
W. Jett Lauck and presented before the United States 
Railway Labor Board in 1920. This investigation was 
carried out in the interests of the railway workeis' unions 
as a part of their effort to gain an increase of wages. It 
is a careful piece of work and throws light upon that 
vague thing called the ''American standard of living." 



274 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Doubtless it will seem strange to many readers that 
we should drag into the Japanese question the number 
and the cost of a woman's stockings and hats, but as a 
matter of history and human psychology it can be dem- 
onstrated that stockings and hats play an important 
part in the settling of such international problems. 

We may say more. These are the things that have 
made the United States what it is. 

The whole trend of immigration proves that America i 
means to the masses of mankind nothing more than a 
standard of living. We find it is the chance of improv- 
ing their food, clothing, shelter, and leisure that draws 
men to our gates. In almost exact proportion to the 
superiority of American jobs and basic commodities over 
the jobs and commodities available in other lands does 
the volume of immigration flow. The exceptions to this 
rule are too slight to be considered here. 

Why did America before the war no longer attract the 
British and Scotch and Germans? Because living con- 
ditions had steadily improved in those countries, on the 
whole, until the advantages to be gained by a worker in 
shifting to America were more than offset by the expense 
and difficulties of moving thousands of miles to a strange 
land and probably having to take up work at first in a 
line in which he had not been trained. Why did the 
Sicilian, the Greek, the Euthenian, and the further Slavs 
pour in faster and faster ? Because the immense differ- 
ence between the amount of bread and meat and wages 
within their reach at home and the amount obtainable in 
our mines and mills made the migration worth while, in 
spite of its cost and hazards. Why to-day do the Irish, 
British, Germans, and even French aerain clamor for ad- 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 275 

mission? Does any sane man think it is because they 
believe that we stand for some higher political, ethical, 
or cultural ideal ? Certainly not. It it nothing but the 
primitive appetite for a full stomach and short working 
hours and a chance to have some pleasure that sets the 
hordes in motion. 

Some political exhorters and after-dinner speakers may 
talk glowingly of the lure of Liberty. But the immi- 
grant himself knows better. During the past years I 
have sent more than one hundred young reporters to 
Ellis Island from time to time, to talk with the incoming 
multitude; and, among other things, they have asked 
about motives. Aside from those immigrants who come 
ostensibly to join their near and dear relatives, nearly 
all say the same thing : it is big pay and better food that 
draws them. Personally I have yet to hear of a man or 
woman who confessed coming hither because of our po- 
litical or other standards and practices. No doubt there 
may be a few such, as there were in the old days when 
the German '48-ers fled hither. But they get lost in the 
torrent of perfectly simple and natural humans moving 
under the spur of hunger. 

These elemental needs are the things which, as much as 
any other single factor, have made Americans indifferent 
to the League of Nations, to the Japanese crisis, to the 
woes of China, and almost ever^i;hing else in the field of 
international relations. Every experienced political ob- 
server from Maine to California who listened to folks talk 
during the recent Presidential campaign knows that they 
have precious little interest in most of the sonorous sub- 
jects dwelt upon by either Harding or Cox. They have 
only one overshadowing interest, and that is in cutting 



276 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the high cost of living, and cutting it in a hurry. They 
all want to get back to the "good old days" of 1910 as 
fast as the hands of the clock can be turned back. They 
are absorbed in the problem of the family budget. Give 
them a politician who can cope with the family budget, 
and they will follow him through fire and flood. Let a 
President get into the White House who fails to make at 
least a respectable try at getting a strangle-hold on the 
monster, and he will stir up a wave of discontent that 
will overwhelm him and his party. 

If you wish proof that the politicians themselves under- 
stand this, read the "Congressional Record" for Decem- 
ber, 1920. A month after Mr. Harding was elected by 
the largest vote ever cast for a President, what is it that 
our statesmen are concerning themselves with? Three 
subjects. Taxes, immigration, and relief for the farm- 
ers ! W^hat 's wrong with taxes ? They keep the cost of 
production up and hence the cost of living. What's 
wrong with immigration ? The workingmen know that a 
great influx of raw alien laborers will force their own 
wages down much faster than the cost of living will drop ; 
while the small farmers know that, if this incoming horde 
is diverted to farms, as some well meaning but ill in- 
formed citizens wish, the American tiller of the soil will 
be driven out on a grand scale by cheap competition, pre- 
cisely as to-day he is being driven out by the thousands 
in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and California. And 
why relief for the farmers? Because, according to the 
best estimates by financial experts, the value of farm 
crops has declined between six and eight billion dollars 
in the past season, the major crops have this year been 
grown at a heavy loss to the farmers, who still represent 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 277 

nearly half of our total population; and this is serious 
in view of the fact — which city folk seem unable to grasp 
— that seven farmers out of ten are still earning less than 
a second-rate union laborer in a small town. 

In short, Congress is giving its best attention to the 
real problem of Americanism, which is a standard of 
living. Whatever the intelligence of our Congressmen 
may be, their instincts are fairly sure in scenting out the 
real issues of life. They know, what so many philoso- 
phizers do not, that there is nothing of greater impor- 
tance in our understanding and framing a national policy 
than the hats and stockings and meat and potatoes which 
all of us want and most of us get. 

Now for a glance at what we Americans actually need. 
Mr. Lauck has brought together the budgets of 280 fam- 
ilies in Washington. The heads of these families are all 
employed in some clerical capacity in Government de- 
partments. The average family size is five — husband, 
wife, and three children. As you glance over the items 
of expenditure in the Appendix, you will find that only 
a few small ones go for anything that is not at most uni- 
versally regarded by city dwellers to-day as necessities 
or semi-necessities. Simple food, plain clothing, the rent 
of the most modest house or apartment, laundry, doctor's 
bill, and insurance — these constitute fully nine-tenths of 
the annual outlay. And this total outlay amounts to 
$2,533.97. 

So far as money cost goes, this is one of the highest of 
workers' budgets; but the good things it provides are 
essentially the same as those enjoyed, more or less abun- 
dantly, by the millions of union laborers and clerical 
workers all over the United States. We shall not go far 



278 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

wrong if we take it as t^T^ifyinf^ the present-day Ameri- 
can eit}^ dweller's standard of living and hence the ideal 
toward which all less fortunate workers, rural and urban, 
are aspiring. 

What, we must next ask, are the effects of the struggle 
upward toward this level of existence? 

DIFFUSION OF LIVING HABITS 

Two things happen when those Americans who are 
living on a level below that of the ordinary city worker 
find the opportunities and habits of the latter attractive 
and strive toward them. 

1. — Rural Americans who are able to afford such hab- 
its in their own country districts bring the means of en- 
joyment thither. Thus we see to-day in all our more 
prosperous farming communities, automobiles, motion- 
picture shows, ''New York stores," parks, band concerts, 
etc. And on the prosperous isolated farms we see all 
manner of city improvements, from electric lights up to 
parlor movies. 

2. — Rural Americans unable to bring such means of 
enjoyment to their own homes become dissatisfied and 
tend to drift to the cities. 

How huge this drift has become nobody realized until 
the reports of the last census began appearing ; and then 
even those who had been making high estimates discov- 
ered that they had been too conservative with figures. 
In the ten years from 1910 to 1920 the country districts 
of the United States grew in population only one third 
as rapidly as in the previous decade. During the same 
period of rural decline, our cities grew 25.2 per cent, or 
eight times as fast as our farming regions, and nearly 



I 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 279 

six times as fast as our villages. In these ten years we 
have added about 14,000,000 people to our numbers, and 
virtually all of this horde have been absorbed by the 
large towns. No other two countries in the world have 
so many cities as we now have. 

Every student of farm life knows that this present co- 
lossal migration from country to town is not economic 
in the narrow sense of the word. It is, as Elwood Mead 
accurately points out, largely a psychological impulse. 
It is the very human desire to enjoy all the good 
things of life that the other fellow enjoys, to be where 
one can talk with people, see new things every day, 
drop into the movies at odd times, play pool, see a ball 
game, and so on. Many a young man has given up a 
five-dollar-a-day job as farm-hand to take a four-dollar- 
a-day job in a town where board-bills and car-fares eat 
up more of his wages in a week than he used to spend in 
a fortnight, and all because of this tremendous urge to 
be civilized. To be civilized means to be ''citified" to- 
day no less than when the Romans invented the word, 
and those who condemn the rush to the cities often over- 
look the fact that, despite many undesirable aspects of 
large-town life, on the whole it comes closer to realizing 
the ideals of civilization than does any other way of life 
that is to-day within reach of the masses. 

This last qualification is most important. It forces 
upon us the conclusion that if for any good reason this 
townward rush must be checked, there can be only one 
way to check it; and that is to make it possible for the 
rural masses to enjoy the urban standard of living in 
the country. To-day at least eight out of every ten 
American rural dwellers are financially unable to do this. 



280 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Plainly, then, we are here confronted with a fact and a 
problem that must fi^ire heavily in our national policy. 
Had we the space here, we might point out several mo- 
mentous tendencies in American life which are forcing 
up the living habits of thousands of people far beyond 
the level of the Lauck budget. We might, for example, 
show what the automobile and good roads are doing in 
the way of creating new habits of daily work, of business, 
and of recreation which can never be broken down with- 
out a grave crisis. Or we might dwell on the rapidly ris- 
ing standards of public health and personal hygiene, all 
immensely stimulated by the war and setting up new 
habits of cleanliness, sanitation, and exercise that strike 
deep into our common life. Or again we might report 
the amazing new appetite for higher education that has 
sprung up, seemingly overnight, as a consequence of the 
war and our post-war prosperit3^ Tens of thousands 
of young men and women discovered during the war 
that it was the trained men who rose fastest from the 
ranks and won responsibilities and honors. The cash 
value of a sound schooling was suddenly made apparent ; 
and at the same time our industrial boom brought to 
innumerable homes ample funds to send the boys and 
girls to college. To-day our universities and technical 
schools are literally turning away students for lack of 
teachers and lack of room to handle them. It requires 
no prophetic vision to state that the effect of this new 
diffusion of higher learning will within twenty-five years 
drive our American standards of living still higher. But 
all of these influences must be left out of account for the 
present, immense though they are. Without them we 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 281 

have more than enough facts on which to base a national 
policy. 

MAINTAINING AN ACCEPTED STANDARD OF LIVING IS THE 
ONLY MORAL BASIS OF A NATIONAL POLICY 

Men may talk about all sorts of fine ideals, such as up- 
lifting Asia or running the League of Nations as being 
** America's first duty." But such talk is either loose 
rhetoric or else gross ignorance. The thing we loosely 
call "American life," which is in reality a complex of 
several hundred habits, most of which are bred into us 
before we are twenty years old, is as stable a thing as 
Chinese life or the Hindu's ways. It resists changes in 
the way of deprivations with a stubbornness that is un- 
believable. Its demands take precedence over all else. 
Once grasp this, and you will realize that it is the ulti- 
mate fact on which all politics and statecraft must build. 

In this we are not a whit different from anybody else. 
A glance at the food habits of other people reveals the 
same inflexibility of elemental appetite. Thus the tan- 
gible evidences prove that the European loves wheat even 
more than peace, and white bread more passionately 
than democracy. 

Wheat affords a startling demonstration of the white 
man's rising standard of living and the extent to which 
his desire for maintaining that standard shapes his per- 
sonal and political conduct. As far back as 1898, the 
growing appetite of Europeans for this grain had be- 
come evident and disquieting. In that year Sir William 
Crookes, the eminent British scientist, reported to the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science that 



282 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

"Of late years the individual consumption of wheat has al- 
most universally increased. In Scandinavia it has risen 100% 
in 25 years; in Austria-Hungary 80%; in France 20%; while 
in Belgium it has increased 50%. Only in Russia and Italy, 
and possibly Turkey, has it declined. 

"In 1871 the bread-eaters of the world numbered 371,000,000. 
In 1881 the numbers rose to 416,000,000; in 1891 to 472,600,- 
000, and at the present time (1898) they number 516,500,000." 

This same authority, in the same report, ventured the 
prediction that by 1921 on the basis of a per capita con- 
sumption for food and for seed of four and a half bush- 
els a year, the world crop would be 3,033,000,000 bushels. 
How conservative this estimate was appears from the fact 
that the wheat crop crossed four billion bushels as early 
as 1913 ! And the demand is still insatiable. 

As is well known, it was this clamor for wheat in Eu- 
i-ope that was chiefly responsible for our own Food Ad- 
ministration's polic}^ toward that staple during the war. 
Impartial observers testified pretty generally that the 
peoples of western Europe had become so addicted to 
wheat bread that, if deprived of it suddenly, even under 
the stress of war, both their digestion and their morale 
would suft'er dangerously. Accordingly, Mr. Hoover 
concentrated largely upon the task of supplying the 
Allies with wheat. It would have been much easier to 
have sent corn or even rye; but twenty-five years of 
efforts on the part of American cereal manufacturers 
have failed to cultivate in Europeans a taste for Johnny 
cake and mush, while, as for rye, western Europe has 
been steadily turning away from that form of food for 
a generation. So we denied ourselves a little and sent 
our wheat. 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 283 

Proof of the very same fierce conservatism of Ameri- 
can life has been set forth by Raj^mond Pearl. Mr. 
Pearl was in charge of the statistical department of the 
United States Food Administration. He made an ex- 
haustive study of the way Americans responded to the 
slogan, * ' Food will win the war, save it ! " Now, if there 
is any one thing that would be certain, it is that millions 
of American families had an intense personal interest in 
winning the war, and that in the shortest time possible. 
Four million of the finest young men went from these 
homes to France. Victory was a matter of life and 
death to them, and joy or misery to their parents and 
relatives. Never in our national history was there a 
mightier incentive to strive and to sacrifice and to en- 
dure. Now, what happened ? 

The Food Administration's own figures show that the 
American people did not change their eating habits to 
any appreciable extent during the war. They reduced 
some items of food, but for every such reduction they in- 
creased others, so that the peace-time quantity was con- 
sumed. In short, men's eating habits cannot be sup- 
pressed even by the desire to win a war except in so far 
as some pressure from without forces them. 

The whole history of the progressive strictness and 
drastic control of the Food Administration confirms this 
psychological law. That administration began its work 
with simple exhortations. Men listened, applauded, and 
went on eating. The administration regulated the gro- 
cers. Both customers and grocers evaded the rules with 
a thousand pretexts. The administration finally found it 
necessary to regulate the sources of supply and impose 
penalties. Then, of course, the habits cf eating certain 



284 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

kinds of food-stuffs, such as sugar and wheat flour, were 
effectively controlled in the cities, though never in the 
country districts any more than they were in Germany. 
But the checking of sugar and flour habits did not reduce 
the total food quantities consumed at all, as Pearl shows. 

From a detailed analysis of the food consumed in all 
America from 1911 to 1918, he finds that we get more 
than half of our protein from animal sources (not in- 
cluding fish) and "in spite of propaganda from dietary 
cranks and from commercial interests it is clear that the 
American people depend to an overwhelming degree 
upon animal sources for their fat intake, rather than 
upon vegetable oils, nuts, and the like." Millions of 
dollars have been spent in advertising vegetarianism and 
patent foods heralded as substitutes for animal fats ; yet 
no noteworthy impression has been made upon the pub- 
lic. Pearl further observes that *'the price of meat may 
rise relatively much more than that of fruits or fish 
without leading to any reduction in consumption, owing 
to the general belief that meat is a more necessary article 
of diet than the other two sorts of food mentioned." In 
passing, I would suggest that the persistence of meat 
eating is not due so much to false notions about its im- 
portance as it is to simple hankering and habit. Many 
people know perfectly well that meat is not essential to 
health but go on eating it because it tastes so much better 
than most substitutes. 

We cannot exaggerate the importance of all this. It 
proves, as was said before, that we are just as set in our 
ways as the Chinaman is; and that, taking peoples by 
the millions, nothing short of a catastrophe will cause 
them to abandon a simple life habit ; and that, when they 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 285 

do abandon one under pressure, grave disturbances are 
sure to follow. Such disturbances would not necessarily 
be fatal, nor would they continue indefinitely; but they 
would spread over the entire country, and infect every- 
day life at a thousand points. 

Plainly, then, it must be a part of our national policy 
to prevent changes in such group habits which are not 
injurious in themselves except when the advantages to 
be gained by such a change offset the irritations, confu- 
sions, and loss of time, money, and morale which the 
change must cause. 

i 

' HOV^ FAR AHEAD SHOULD WE PLAN FOR SUPPLYING THE 
NEEDS OF OUR LIFE HABITS? 

When an intelligent American working-man marries, 
he begins to provide in one manner or another for his 
future. First, he takes out life insurance to protect his 
wife ; then he saves money to buy a home. When chil- 
dren come, he makes further efforts to lay aside funds 
against the day, many years off, when his Ned is ready 
and eager to go to college and become an engineer, and 
his Mary wants to study nursing. Father and mother 
husband their resources and exert themselves to increase 
the family income to this end, and it is not at all un- 
common for them to plan twenty years ahead. 

Now, would it not seem that the State should do at 
least as much for its citizens in the way of foresight and 
planning as a pair of normally thrifty parents would for 
their children ? Would not the very crudest type of na- 
tional policy provide for the future needs of all the 
people who are alive when that policy is formed and 
adopted? In comparison with the scope of the national 



286 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

policies which many eminent politicians, international 
bankers, and idealists have lately been urging ns to em- 
brace, this one seems pitifully meager and narrow. Sup- 
pose, though, that we were to pursue it consistently. 
Whither would it lead us? The answer is startling. 

On the day that these lines are being written, December 
31, 1920, thousands of babies are being born in American 
homes, and of this multitude several thousand will live 
to the age of eighty years. They will celebrate New 
Year's Day, in the year of our Lord 2000. Let us be 
sufficiently interested in the upbringing and the happi- 
ness of these, our youngest fellow-citizens, to begin plan- 
ning to-day that they may have, their lives through, at 
least as many of the necessities and good things as a 
Government clerk in Washington enjoys to-day. 

At the very outset of our planning, we must ask the 
following questions : 

1. What are the prospects that those Americans will 
have at least as good food and as much of it as the Wash- 
ington clerk to-day has ? 

2. What steps must be taken now to make it reason- 
ably sure that he will have such food in the year 2000? 

3. What are the prospects that those Americans will 
be earning wages that will buy in the markets of that 
day the meat, fish, milk, eggs, fruits, sugar, house furni- 
ture, fuel, laundry, soap, doctor's sersdces, and all the 
other hundred and one items which the Washington clerk 
of to-day enjoys? 

4. What steps must be taken to make it reasonably cer- 
tain that they will be able to earn such wages ? 

5. What are the prospects that those Americans will 
have clubs, societies, churches, theaters, and, above all, 



OUR NATIONAL POLICY 287 

neighbors at least as agreeable and satisfactory as those 
now enjoyed by the Washington clerk ? 

6. What steps must be taken now to make it reason- 
ably sure that he will have these? 

7. What are the prospects that those Americans will 
enjoy at least the same degree of health and happiness in 
2000 as the Washington clerk now does ? 

8. What steps must be taken now to make it reason- 
ably sure that they will enjoy that much? 

These are the real and the deep problems under- 
neath every intelligent national policy. The nation that 
asks such questions of its own citizens and does its best 
to solve them has a sound statecraft, and, other things 
being equal, will succeed where other less far-sighted na- 
tions perish. These questions it is which the statesmen 
of Japan are facing and working over night and day. 
We may disapprove of the feudalism of the Elder 
Statesmen in fine democratic phrases, we may condemn 
the Prussianized militarists of Tokio, we may despise 
the Japanese peasant's low standard of living and his 
simple life habits; but we cannot refrain from admir- 
ing the intelligent persistence with which Japan is or- 
ganizing all her forces to find work and agreeable homes 
for her seventy millions and their children. Her rulers 
clearly recognize that the first law of life is to go on liv- 
ing, and the second law of life is to live better in the 
future than in the past, if that can be managed. We 
shall do well to give it a trial. 

In the following chapters answers will be sought for 
the questions we have asked. We shall look into the fu- 
ture of the world's food supply and the xVmerican farmer. 
We shall study the tendency of races and populations to 



288 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

fill the earth. Having done which in brief form, we 
shall then apply our findings to the shaping of a na- 
tional policy which plays fair to all the infants now cry- 
ing in American cradles and fair to the hungry millions 
of the Orient. 

Obviously, a national policy has not been completed 
as soon as we have found ways and means of supplying 
all our citizens, present and future, with food, clothes, 
shelter, and the simple pleasures and luxuries indicated 
in the "Washington clerk's family budget. All these are 
the indispensable beginning of a sound national policy, 
but they are not the last word. For one thing, there are 
some habits now present and active in American life 
which must be broken down if we are to advance and 
prosper. They are too numerous and too difficult to con- 
sider in a study like the present one; but there are two 
among them which are so intimately connected with the 
Japanese crisis that we must give them some considera- 
tion, albeit cursory. One of these is the old habit of 
racial segregation. The other is the habit of letting all 
sorts and conditions of human beings come here to live 
without regard to the ease or obstinacy with which they 
fit into our social and political life. There is little sense 
in talking about a national policy until we have become 
a nation, and in some important respects we still fall 
short of being that. This deficiency underlies many of 
our political troubles and figures broadly in our relations 
to Japan. So, after a survey of the more immediate fac- 
tors in our Oriental crisis, we shall look briefly at the 
problems of Americanization and immigration. 



CHAPTER 22 
THE world's food TO-DAY AND TO-MOEROW 

WE have just been looking at a serious effort to 
compute the details and the cost of a standard 
of living which is believed by thousands of people to 
be the lowest mode of existence in which they can be 
moderately contented. This computation of Mr. Lauck'a 
ceases to be a dull piece of statistics the instant we ask 
what it means and implies precisely in terms of world 
production and consumption. Suppose we were to pass 
laws to-morrow which guaranteed to every American the 
many items in Mr. Lauck's list. Wliat would happen? 
It can be told in a word. In the first place, the produc- 
tion of food and basic supplies would have to be more 
than doubled at once ; and in the second place, this could 
not be accomplished, even if the total wealth now pro- 
duced annually in the United States were all invested in 
this Utopian project. And this in the richest country 
on earth! 

Does this excite or distress the average American? 
Not at all ! He smiles at it with his usual optimism of 
youth and immaturity. He has inherited two precious 
gifts which keep him in everlasting good humor ; one is 
the better half of North America, the other is the British 
habit of ''muddling through." He refuses to shudder 
at the warnings and prophecies of Raymond Pearl, who 

289 



290 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

has just stated in his Lowell Institute lecture, that some 
time around the year 2100 the United States \nll have a 
population of about 197,000,000 and will then have 
reached its limit and must import almost one-half of its 
food. 

The average American, whose level of mentality seems 
to be somewhere around fourteen to sixteen years accord- 
ing to the Army intelligence tests, will faithfully echo the 
verdict of his favorite editorial writer, Arthur Brisbane, 
regarding such dire forebodings. This clever journalist, 
who knows his audience through and through, comments 
scathingly on the "mere guesswork" of "another college 
professor." In the New York "American" of Decem- 
ber 21, Mr. Brisbane exposes the foolishness of Pearl. 
He assures his own vast public that the United States is 
ten times the size of Japan. (It happens to be more 
than twenty times the size, but what matters a mere error 
of one hundred per cent?) And if Japan, says he, can 
support sixty million people on her tiny islands, these 
mighty United States can feed and shelter more than 
seven hundred millions. Why ! It has been proved that 
the State of Texas alone could, if cultivated intensively, 
take care of a billion and a half hungry stomachs. 

Thus, with no weapon save the multiplication table, 
Mr. Brisbane slays the giant. Despair. And jou may be 
sure that ten million red-blooded Americans are cheering 
the victor at the top of their lungs. And if am^body 
insists upon asking Mr. Brisbane whether he approves 
of cultivating Texas and the rest of our raw acres inten- 
sively, thereby making our farmers and their children 
work as the Japanese do, the crowd will throw pop bottles 
at the impertinent querist. 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 291 

Unfortunately, the mere college professor knows what 
he is talking about in his ''guesswork," and Mr. Brisbane 
does not. As chief statistician of the Food Administra- 
tion and a biologist of unusual experience, Mr, Pearl has 
a few thousand facts on hand, many of which a journalist 
would have considerable difficulty in imderstanding. A 
few of these must now be related, more or less simplified. 

It would be absurd to deny that the world at large, 
and our o\vn land in particular, will greatly increase the 
yield of food and other crops, as the need arises. Mil- 
lions of fertile acres still lie untouched. Hundreds of 
vegetables and fruits have never yet been experimented 
with properly with a view to finding how cheaply and 
how easily they can be raised and utilized as food. These 
undeveloped possibilities have been extensively studied 
and reported upon by Mr. J. Kussell Smith in his inter- 
esting volume on ' ' The World 's Food Resources, ' ' where 
he says : 

"With nearly every article of diet except meat we can 
easily and greatly increase the supply in the Western World. 
In the United States alone, so little is farm land utilized and 
sought that in large areas east of the AUeghanies it is a fact 
that when a man sells a farm he gives away either the value 
of the building or the value of the land, for the price obtained 
is often less than would be required to rejjlaee the buildings. 
Very little land in the United States is intensively cultivated: 
moreover the Untied States enjoys an advantage unique in the 
Western World — a vast area on which to cultivate the great 
gift of corn. Over one million square miles of the country 
can produce this king of forage crops, one of the most pro- 
ductive and easily grown of all the grains. . . . 

"Moreover the American cotton-belt with its summer rain, 
with an area six times the size of Italy, and now supporting 



292 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

only from twenty to fifty people per square mile, has easily 
twice the ability of Italy to produce food, raiment, and timber, 
per square mile and is many fold richer in minerals and water 
power. . . . 

''There are in the West sixty thousand square miles which 
irrigation can make almost or quite as productive as the re- 
claimed marshlands which are twice as productive as uplands, 
and at the present time almost untouched." 

So much for the possibilities of increasing our yields. 
As for future economies, Mr. Smith makes a point that 
commands our serious attention. It will surprise most 
city readers and perhaps help them to correct their badly 
distorted perspective of life to-day as it really is organ- 
ized. Mr. Smith shows that the United States is chiefly 
engaged in feeding animals, rather than men, and that, 
when the pinch comes, we shall follow the ancient prece- 
dent of Asia and stop being, as it were, mere valets to 
the horse, pig, and cow. 

He points out, quite correctly, that our farmers are 
raising something more than five billion bushels of grain 
every year, of which about 900,000,000 bushels are eaten 
by Americans or else by foreign consumers. Allowing 
for annual reserves for seeding purposes, we find that 
fully four billion bushels of this prodigious yearly har- 
vest are fed to our domestic animals. Smith then quotes 
the great expert on animal nutrition, Armsby, and his 
famous proof that man 's chief competitor for high-grade 
foods, such as wheat and corn, is the hog ; and that the 
worst thing that can happen to America is a marked 
increase in the number of hogs and steers, especially the 
former. America, as her population increases, must cut 
down her herds to the point at which they consume only 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 293 

such foods as man cannot eat, such as hay from low 
grade soils and roughage. This means a gradual reduc- 
tion of meat and animals products and perhaps some day 
an all but universal vegetarianism, such as we now see 
all over Asia. If we move in this direction, it is obvious 
that the world will continue to feed even a growing popu- 
lation for much longer than two centuries. 

There is no challenging either these statistics or the 
conclusion Smith draws. The only difficulty lies in his 
last ''If." If people will consent to reduce their meat 
diet, and if farmers will virtually do away with all 
draught animals save those absolutely indispensable, no 
doubt things will proceed as indicated. But will they? 

This brings us the root of tbe whole matter. And 
we find that Mr. Smith, together with most other inves- 
tigators who have concentrated too narrowly upon the 
abstract statistical side of the food and population prob- 
lems, have left entirely out of their calculations the two 
strongest forces in human nature. They think exclu- 
sively in terms of theoretical land areas and theoretical 
yields. They ignore the man with the hoe and the man 
with the tractor. They look away from the investor's 
lamentable weakness for wishing to earn dividends on 
capital sunk in farm lands. And they pass by on the 
other side when the toiler of the fields shows peevishness 
at being expected to work fourteen hours a day. And 
yet, when all is said and done, the whole future of agri- 
culture will be shaped by these two fundamental human 
interests. The investor will always be asking: *'Can 
this field show a profit, if I have it tilled?" And the 
farm laborer will be demanding certain hours of work, 
certain amounts of food, a certain kind of a house to live 



294 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

in, and all the rest that enters into a set of life habits. 
It is useless to speculate about the world's future supply 
of food unless we begin with a stud}^ of these two limiting 
factors. 

Let us first look at the problem of living standards, 
which is sharply rai.jcJ by Mr. Smith's interesting state- 
ment about the possibility of our progressively becoming 
vegetarian and living on the grains the quadrupeds now 
take from us. His entire argument hinges upon an im- 
mense improbability, the improbability that people who 
have accustomed themselves to a rich diet and a rela- 
tively easy method of procuring it, namely, through ex- 
tensive agriculture, are going to give up two such lux- 
uries until every method of preserving them has been 
tested and has failed. We have tried to show, earlier in 
this volume, how tenacious all life habits are. We 
pointed out the amazing stubbornness of food habits. 
We may be sure tliat human ingenuity will exert itself 
to the utmost to find some way of going on eating and 
drinking as of yore. 

Now men have already discovered ways of guarantee- 
ing this blessed privilege. All the United States needs 
to do in order to maintain its present, or even a higher, 
level of dietarj^ is to regulate the growth of population 
and the net volume of food exports. The population 
growth can be regulated in two manners, first through 
birth control and secondly through immigration control. 
The Government of Holland has already adopted the 
former • measure with unqualified success, and we shall 
probably follow suit as soon as the political influence of 
the more backward religious groups in our population 
can be overcome through education, which is now being 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 295 

carried on by our relatively small but energetic intel- 
lectual class. As for immigration control, it is on the 
point of being exercised to a degree far beyond anything 
yet attempted since the old days when China and Japan 
barred their gates against all foreigners. Our farmers 
and our city workers have, for the first time, joined hands 
in their determination to reduce the influx of aliens. 

Already the American farmer realizes that his ways of 
life will be jeopardized, if the plans of some well mean- 
ing city folk are carried out and millions of immigrants 
are scattered through the farming districts of our coun- 
try, there to form low-standard colonies clinging to their 
old folkways and speech and working fourteen hours a 
day, as the Italian, Jewish, Greek, Polish, and other farm 
colonies all over the North Atlantic States and New Eng- 
land now do. And the American of the old sod is now 
debating whether he shall give way before this driving 
horde or shall take steps to preserve the high level of 
living on the farm which the more prosperous farmers 
here have been enjoying for many years. If the stir- 
ring of human forces now visible through American so- 
ciety, notably among farmers, can be taken as a sign and 
symptom, we must conclude that America is going to 
reject Smith's Asiatic policy and will soon be moving 
in earnest to check our population growth and to main- 
tain our high food production per hour's work, which, 
when all is said and done, is the basic measure of a high 
civilization, so far as its agrarian aspect is concerned. 

It may be, of course, that we shall see in the future 
something of a decline in the number of meat animals 
raised in our own land ; but this will not be coupled with 
a reduction of meat consumption to the point of vege- 



296 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tarianism. We shall see the animal industries trans- 
ferred more and more to those immense stretches in South 
America, Australia, and Siberia where cheaper lands 
and cheaper labor make the business more profitable. 
American farmers will probably increase, rather than de- 
crease, their herds of high-grade beef cattle and hogs, 
handling them in closer conjunction with scientific crop- 
ping systems on farms of medium acreage. Both the 
very large ranch and the very small intensively culti- 
vated farm (below fifty acres) may be expected to dis- 
appear, not many decades after an intelligent national 
policy has been pursued. The large ranch is primitive 
and wasteful of soil power. The tiny intensively culti- 
vated farm is Asiatic and cruelly wasteful of man power. 
Neither has any plaee in a complete civilization. 

The more closely one analyzes Smith's entire inter- 
pretation of ci\alization and its relation to agriculture, 
the more evident does it become that he has, probably 
without clear consciousness, accepted the Asiatic stand- 
ard of living as worthy of emulation. Thus we hear him 
say that ''draft animals seem necessary to the ascent of 
a people toward civilization, although in parts of Japan 
and China it has been shown that need of them can ulti- 
mately be reduced to a minimum." This statement im- 
plies that the farmers of Japan and China who have dis- 
pensed largely with draft animals have ascended to 
civilization; if they have not, then the whole remark is 
meaningless. But any white man who has observed the 
day's work of an Oriental who farms with few or none of 
the beasts of burden cannot honestly say that the Orien- 
tal is civilized. He has dispensed with the beasts only 
by making himself, his wife, and his children beasts. He 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 297 

slaves from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, with his 
whole family ; and he wears himself and them out prema- 
turely, with almost nothing to show for their crushing 
toil save a scanty food supply and the other bare neces- 
sities of life. The blunt fact of the matter is that the 
lack of draft animals in Japan and China is one of the 
best proofs of the low civilization of those lands. 

The United States is not giving up draft animals. 
Many agricultural experts believed that, with the intro- 
duction of the all but revolutionary farm tractor, we 
should see a swift decline in the number of horses used 
on our farms. But no such change is taking place. 
Oddly enough, as farmers prosper more and more 
through the use of tractors and other labor-saving ma- 
chinery, they increase the number of high-grade horses 
and mules. The reasons for this are too technical to be 
set forth here. Enough to say that it is now pretty 
generally believed that the tractor is going to be the 
horse's best friend in the long run, leading to a higher 
specialization in heavy farm work that will enable the 
farmer to get more out of both the machine and the 
animal, and on a mor'e economical basis. 

So much for the standard of living as an obstacle to 
Mr. Smith's hopes. Now let us see about the investment 
returns. And at the outset let us clearly understand 
that what is to be said on this point holds equally good, 
whether it is a private capitalist of the State which con- 
templates agrarian investments. The notion is abroad 
that, while a private capitalist cannot afford to sink 
money in losing ventures, somehow the public can. This 
is absurd. If it will not pay me, an individual, to de- 
velop ten thousand acres of Montana bone-dry soil, it will 



298 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

not pay the State of Montana to do it, unless there is 
some other advantage besides immediate profits to be cer- 
tainlj^ derived from the operation. And if there is such 
an advantage, then the two cases are not truly com- 
parable. 

Now, the whole question of return on investment is 
bound up w»ith two others, namely, the precise character 
of available raw acreage and the rate at which the world's 
population is increasing and laying fresh demands upon 
the farmer. How accessible is the unworked land? 
What climate does it have? Can men work it without 
being stricken with fevers or pestilence? Can steam- 
ships reach it? How far is it from railroads? How 
many people will consume the products it can best grow ? 
These and a hundred similar matters are involved; and 
the mere naming of them conve^^s a painful impression 
of the true intricacy of the real problem. 

In another chapter of this book, Mr. Warren S. Thomp- 
son shows us how fast the world population is growing. 
Taking his conservative estimate and the more liberal one 
of Knibbs, Avho is indubitably the greatest authority in 
the world on population, you may strike a safe average 
between them and find that the net increase per year is 
somewhere around 17,000,000 or 18,000,000 souls. Bear 
in mind that this is not the birth rate. It is the excess 
of births over deaths. 

What does this appalling figure mean? It means that 
adout every six months a new Belgmm is added to the 
worJd^s horde and about every tioo years a neiv France! 

And how about the three square meals a day which 
these millions express a yearning for? Well, an Ameri- 
can eats, in the course of one year, about 1,900 pounds of 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 299 

food, dry weight. A Japanese eats as little as 900 
pounds. We may roughly take therefore 1,000 pounds 
of flour, cereals, smoked fish, sugar, and other dry food 
stuffs as the amount which the average world inhabitants 
devour as soon as they attain full growth. This estimate 
is, in all likelihood, too low ; but let it pass. 

Every year the farmers of the world must provide 
some twenty -three billion pounds of food more than they 
ever provided before simply to keep pace with the rap- 
idly expanding population and the ever increasing de- 
mands for seed. 

Or look at this staggering fact from the point of view 
of the land to be tilled. In many of the countries least 
highly developed agriculturally it takes from ten to 
twenty acres to support one man. In our own country 
it takes between three and four acres. Japan, by inten- 
sive culture of the richest lands only, provides for three 
men on every acre. By and large the average for the 
world is somewhat less than two men to three acres. 
Taking that as our basis, for the sake of argument, let 
us see what must be happening. 

Every season the farmers of the world must plow and 
plant, cultivate, and harvest from twenty to thirty mil- 
lion more acres than they did the previous year. True, 
there will be more gnarled hands to grasp the plow- 
handle, more backs to bend over the furrow; but the 
new land, the reserve supply for expansion, diminishes 
year by year. And every new plot of virgin soil wrested 
from the wild is just a little worse than that which went 
before. What this means is shown in the accompanying 
map of New York State. The immense black L extend- 
ins: from the Hudson River almost to Lake Erie and 



300 



MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 



from Poughkeepsie to Lake Champlain represents the 
extra area that the peasants of the world must add to 
their tillage every year, if the increase of world popu- 
lation is to be fed as well as the average man is fed to- 



The solid black block in the above map of New York State rep- 
resents the area of new land which must be tilled every year in 
order to feed the extra millions who are added amually to the 
world's population. 



day in Japan, China, Europe, and America. To me 
this black L is the most staggering fact in all life to-day. 
Do 3^ou not begin to see the whole phenomenon of 
world-wide living costs in a new light? At no time in 
the past century, while population has been growing at 
this terrific rate, have the farmers of the world increased 
their acreage and their crops proportionately. Had they 



301 



302 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tried it, they would liave found it an impossible task. 
The railroads and the merchant marine of the whole 
world could not have stood the strain of carrying such 
a mounting output, had it been dumped at their ter- 
minals. Nor could the farm machinery manufacturers 
have delivered the necessary equipment. Thus it has 
happened that, every year throughout the past genera- 
tion, the food supply has been lagging further and fur- 
ther behind the hungry hordes. And this alone would 
suffice to send the price of all foodstuffs steadily upward, 
the world over, even if no other forces had been at work 
to the same end, such as money inflation and a rising 
standard of living. 

"With ea,ch fresh season, therefore, the question becomes 
more and more acute : 

Where are we going to find this acreage, and where 
find men to work it? 

Of the 33,000 million acres of the land area of the 
world, not more than 40 per cent, or 13,000 million acres, 
are available for food production. With a permanent 
system of agriculture, this land can support one indi- 
vidual per acre if standards of living do not rise any 
higher. To be sure, Japan supports more than three 
people per acre, but she does this only because she has 
taken her best land, only 18.7 per cent of the total, and 
cultivates it intensively by slave methods repugnant to 
us. It is very much to be doubted whether the world 
as a whole can ever reach and maintain a population 
per acre of cultivated land as great as Germany and 
France, which, just before the war, used 1.15 acres 
and 1.5 acres per capita respectively. We may safely 
say that the earth can support not more than 13,000 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 303 

million people, even on a pretty low standard of living. 
At the present rate of increase this population ivill 'be 
reached in just 200 years. 
So much for the world at large. Now let us look more 

I narrowly at our own land. What have we been doing 
with our soil? What remains to be done? What will 

i happen to the babies born to-day if our present tend- 
encies in farming continue until the year 2000? These 

I questions bring us sharply back to the problem of our 
own national policy. 

In our own new and supposedly inexhaustible America, 
we have expanded from a floor space of 200 million acres 

' and a population of four million to one of 1903 million 

\ acres inhabited by 110 million people. Forty-seven per 
cent of our 1903 million acres is now in farms, though it 
has thus far been profitable to improve and farm only 
about one-half the area. There remains a reserv'e of over 
a billion acres, it is true ; but nearly half of this is arid 
land having a precipitation of less than 15 inches, and 
less than 10 per cent will become available after the com- 
pletion of all irrigation projects possible under the pres- 
ent system of construction. In addition, making allow- 
ance for permanent forests, for unusable swamps and for 
cities, roads, and railroads, there are something like three- 
quarters of a billion acres which must be forever with- 
held from agricultural use. There is left 300 million 
acres, roughly 35 per cent of our present farm lands, 
which may be incorporated with them. Moreover this 
35 per cent is the poor expanse of waste passed by as 
worthless by the farmers. 

Now how can this poor land be used ? There are just 
three methods. One is to dose it heavily with fertilizers. 



304 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

The second is to labor over soil and crops much more 
minutely than on rich soils. And the third is to improve 
plant breeds. Now we have already shown the futility 
of the first two ways of salvation : fertilizers cost money 
and, when applied to poor land, bring its yield only up 
to that of fair land, but at a very high cost per acre, 
thus increasing the production cost and diminishing the 
margin of profit; and excess of labor works in just the 
same way, besides causing discontent in the toiler. So 
there remains only the third. 

As to its infinite possibilities, the city dweller who 
reads the amateur optimists is warmly convinced. He 
has read all about Luther Burbank in the Sunday Sup- 
plements. And wasn't there a boy down in Georgia 
who grew a hundred bushels of corn on one acre with 
some special fancy seed? Just get a scientist busy in- 
venting new plants, and there will be no food short- 
age. 

Once more, however, we must apply the cold water 
treatment to this Polly anna vision. Mr. E. M. East can 
tell us a few facts that hurt. Doubtless somebody will 
retort to the facts by calling Mr. East a college professor. 
But in addition to the ignominy of being one, Mr. East 
happens to have had some years of experience as a prac- 
tical farmer and has done as much in the way of scien- 
tific plant breeding as anybody in the country. In fact, 
his achievements in improving breeds of com are so sen- 
sational that, if a Sunday Supplement writer were able 
to understand them, he would give them a full page with 
two-color pictures. 

At the La Jolla Conference, speaking of such possi- 
bilities, Mr. East adduced facts, too technical to report 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 305 

here, showing that the popular impression is totally 
wrong. To be sure, he remarked, some noteworthy ad- 
vances have been made, and others will be. But when 
all is said and done, no new processes are involved, 
and the few time-saving devices now used, or in the 
prospect of being used, for the evolution of new forms 
of plant and of animal life are not going to increase our 
resources by leaps and bounds. The prospective increase 
is relatively small. The development of plants and ani- 
mals under domestication has been going on for thou- 
sands of years by these same methods, and the type of 
labor-saving device we have described will hasten matters 
only a little. There will be no revolution. Furthermore, 
let us suppose that the maximum prediction shall be real- 
ized. In Mr. East's opinion, hy the expenditure of time 
and money for breeding projects on a scale at present 
he'i^ond the dream of the most enthusiastic propagandist, 
current production will have been increased hy twenty 
per cent. Is this a consummation devoutly to be wished 
or not ? Perhaps it is merely a vehicle for exploiting a 
limited store of soil fertility at a greater rate, a means 
of dissipating capital more rapidly. 

During the seventies and eighties in the United States 
there was a great expansion of farming. The rich lands 
of the West were cultivated extensively. Because of 
these methods there were low yields per acre, but the 
number of new acres utilized was so great that over- 
production and extremely low prices prevailed. More 
recently there has been a trend toward intensive farm- 
ing, hence an increased yield per acre and a lowering of 
the production per man. The average yield of all crops 
between 1903 and 1918 was about 15 per cent greater 



306 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

than that between 1860 and 1890, but it took a consider- 
ably greater expenditure of man power per acre to get 
this yield. Those who point out that we have not reached 
the yield per acre of the best farmers of Europe would 
do well to remember this point. The most intensive 
farmers of Europe, the Belgians, cultivate about five 
acres per man. The American farmer handles 26 acres. 

Now, when we forget about the war and go back over 
the production figures per capita from 1870 to 1916, we 
find that meat has decreased markedly and total food 
production slightly. We are still getting plenty to eat, 
but overproduction and cheap food have stopped. 

The population of the United States is now increasing 
somewhat more rapidly than the acreage of cropped land, 
as is shown by the census report of the years 1880-90 
fixing the amount of improved land at 5.7 acres per 
capita and the report of 1910 revealing the fact that 
the acreage of improved land had decreased to 5.2 per 
capita. And all this in face of the fact that 18,000,000 
more people, mostly whites, were demanding food with 
each oncoming year ! 

And yet this tendency is not only inevitable but funda- 
mentally sound. This is as it should be. The time for 
easy food production from virgin lands has vanished. 
Fertilizer consumption has increased by leaps and 
bounds. Some farms have been abandoned through de- 
pletion to the point of exhaustion. New lands less pro- 
ductive in nature are gradually being put under the plow 
because prices are such that they yield a fair return. 
Intensive farming is increasing. In all this there is 
every evidence of diminishing returns in agriculture, yet 
few take any thought of what it means. 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 307 

Herbert Hoover knows what it means, though, and 
he recently made it plain to the American Association 
of the Baking Industry, in an address which had to do 
with wheat and wheat prices. His words are worth 
quoting here at some length, for they amply confirm my 
main contention. 

After stating that the general level of commodity 
prices would steadily decline, Mr. Hoover went on to 
declare that wheat should not and could not drop pro- 
portionately. Here is his argument. Your attention 
is particularly called to the last of it : 

"In other words, if something like pre-war prices should 
again prevail, I do not believe we will,- over any considerable 
term, see the old 90-cent wheat, or anji^hing like it. During 
the war the price of wheat was successfully held at a higher 
ratio than other commodities — an index of about 243 for 
wheat, against 186 for other commodities in 1917, in order to 
induce larger production. If we take the year 1913 average 
price of wholesale wheat and other commodities as 100, at the 
present time the prices are approximately 300 for wheat and 
about 270 for other commodities. Wheat has been losing 
greater advantage, and a reduced acreage has been the conse- 
quence. It is my belief that wheat must hold at least fifty 
index points advance over comparative commodity prices if 
we are to assure supplies for our increasing population. 
That is, if other commodities should return to 100, wheat must 
hold 150 or some considerable excess. 

"There are many reasons for this. One of them is that 
expansion of the possible wheat area in the United States is 
now comparatively limited unless we retrench on other essen- 
tial production. In fact, there is even, indeed, serious shrink- 
age of wheat area in prospect, due to the unconquered inva- 
sion of rust in our spring wheat areas of the Northwest. This 



308 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

threatened deficiency must be maintained by an inducement 
to expand wheat production in the Southwest, Furthermore, 
our average yield of wheat per acre must have a steady in- 
crease if we are to meet the necessities of an advancing popula- 
tion. An increase from our average of less than sixteen 
bushels toward the average of western European production of 
over twenty-five bushels per acre is in the main the possible 
source of supply in the long run. This can only be obtained 
by more intensive cultivation and the larger use of fertilizers, 
and those extra costs do not show a profitable return ratio in 
prices. The American farmer naturally can only engage in 
extra expense for extra return. It is sometimes said that our 
breadstuff needs will outgrow our capacity for the produc- 
tion of wheat. This is not necessarily the case within our 
century, for it is always possible to contemplate an increase 
per acre that would keep pace with our increase in population, 
but this cannot be accomplished on the basis of the prewar 
ratio prices of wheat to other commodities." 

In short, land is wearing out; acres still virgin are 
poor ; larger yields mean costly fertilizer and unpleasant 
labor. And so up must go the cost of food. Deflating 
the currency may produce the illusion of cheaper food. 
But in the permanent readjustment of values that must 
follow deflation, food costs are bound to be higher than 
ever. 

All of which is the price our children must pay for the 
recklessness of our grandfathers and fathers, who, in the 
midst of their broad acres, used to laugh at Malthus and 
his gloomy prognostications of an overcrowded world and 
universal hunger. The farmers of the past century re- 
ceived in trust the agricultural capital of the country. 
The people gave it to them with the same careless liber- 
ality that we always hand over to poor relatives the 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 309 

things around the house which we cannot use. Not one 
man in a million ever thought of those endless prairies 
as capital which must be made to show profits or else 
eventually thrown into the hands of a receiver. They 
were mere dirt and dirt cheap. What if nine pioneers 
out of ten did rob the soil, taking out 24 cents' worth of 
fertility every time they grew a bushel of wheat? Could 
anybody be so foolish as to suppose that folks might ever 
use up the world's supply of black earth? As well 
think of drinking up the Pacfic Ocean ! 

The few who have given the subject serious thought 
frequently defend their optimism by pointing to Europe. 
Europe proves that soils do not wear out, and that there 
is no limit to the number of people this little old world 
can support. ''After thousands of years of cropping, 
her soils are supporting more people than ever," is the 
familiar remark. 

Unfortunately, though, this opinion is about as sound 
as Mr. Brisbane's wonderful vision of Texas supporting 
the world. As Mr. East has shown by a careful study of 
population and agricultural statistics, Europe has never 
been cropped to capacity until the present generation. 
And it is an ominous fact that, in the very same decades 
when her nations were reaching their limit of intensive 
cultivation and dense population, the whole continent 
exploded in a war of economic expansion that involved 
almost every country and finally flung two-thirds of the 
continent back into starvation, pestilence, and barbarism. 
He would be a dull historian indeed who failed to mark 
some inner connection between these two phenomena. 

Here a word about another outburst of optimism which 
has lately been advertised and has doubtless solaced not 



310 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

a few. Many casual observers have supposed that the 
immense losses of life in Europe between 1914 and 1918 
by battle, pestilence and famine, must have removed, for 
many years to come, the danger of overpopulation. This 
is far from the truth. About 18,000,000 Europeans died 
as a result of the war. But in about twelve months the 
increase of population throughout the world completely 
offsets this war loss. 

Nor is this all. The dangers of overpopulation are 
relative, not only to the gross food supply available, but 
also to the facilities for distribution, which are both geo- 
graphical and artificial. That is, China may theoreti- 
cally be able to feed 600,000,000 mouths or even more, 
as Mr. Paul Reinsch believes ; and yet as a matter of fact, 
China is to-day horribly overpopulated. The reason for 
this is that she has few railroads, no good highways 
worth mentioning, no great storage warehouses, and none 
of the Western farm credit and cooperative systems. 
Now, Europe to-day is in almost the same predicament 
as China. Her transportation S3^stem and her distribu- 
tion have collapsed and cannot be rehabilitated for some 
years, with the best of effort. In 1910 Europe contained 
442,000,000 people and probably a round 450,000,000 on 
the fatal day when the World War broke out. Her 
transportation and distribution sj^stem was, in 1914, 
fairly adjusted to the colossal task of feeding and cloth- 
ing her hordes. To-day the railroads of Central and 
Eastern Europe are in such a state of decay that they 
cannot properly care for the elemental needs of more 
than a quarter of the beings who are now starving be- 
side those rusted rails and decrepit locomotives. Some 
432,000,000 Europeans have survived the war and the 



THE WORLD'S FOOD 311 

influenza and typhus epidemics ; but the food production 
and distribution systems can take care of only 125,000,- 
000 well or 250,000,000 poorly. The other 182,000,000 
or more wretches are either undernourished or starving 
to-day, in spite of all relief work, and they must continue 
to starve until the reconstruction of the railways has been 
finished. 

The implications of this horror confirm our whole 
argument and add a fresh lesson all their own. They 
show the peril of permitting populations to become so 
dense that they are dependent upon the perfect and 
regular functioning of an intricate system of long-range 
food production and food distribution. Such a system 
may operate smoothly in fair weather ; but when trouble 
comes, the price that the dumb crowd pays for its crowd- 
ing is hideous. 

To conclude then, if people are willing to live like the 
beasts of the fields, always searching food and facing 
horrible hazards of famine, there is room for many more 
millions on earth. If they care to enjoy leisure and the 
simple comforts which our Washington clerk now revels 
in, and if they insist upon getting even modest returns 
from capital and labor invested in farms, it is clear that, 
measured in terms of the long, long ages which mark 
man's career on this planet, the dead line will soon be 
reached. 



CHAPTER 23 
WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 

WE have just seen that the world's population is in- 
creasing at the incredible rate of 18,000,000 a 
year, and if this keeps up the last tillable acre of soil 
will be plowed in the spring of 2120, or thereabouts. We 
have also seen — what most of us already knew — that the 
105,000,000 whites and blacks that are citizens of the 
continental United States have set their faces determin- 
edly in the direction of a higher and ever higher stand- 
ard of living, which means more and better food, better 
clothes, finer homes, easier travel, and fewer hours of 
daily toil. On the face of it, here is a tragic dilemma. 
If the herds of humans go on growing, food will give out, 
and so too will almost everything else; and then where 
is the much loved American standard of living ? On the 
other hand, what can we Americans do to check that 
fatal increase of population? Is it not inevitable that 
we shall soon be swamped by this sickening irrational 
breeding that resembles nothing so much as that of the 
little fish which spawn in some tiny stream and there 
grow so fast that they crowd thousands of their kind 
out of the water ? 

The easiest and gloomiest answer to this has lately 
been repeated in vigorous journalistic language by Mr. 
Lothrop Stoddard, who tells us, in his ''Rising Tide of 
Color": 

312 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 313 

"The colored races outnumber the whites more than two to 
one. . . . That is a formidable ratio, and its significance is 
heightened by the fact that this ratio seems destined to shift 
still further in favor of color. There can be no doubt that at 
present the colored races are increasing very much faster than 
the white. Treating the primary race-stocks as units, it would 
appear that whites tend to double in eighty years, yellows 
and browns in sixty years, blacks in forty years. . . . 

"Now what must be the inevitable result of all this? It can 
mean only one thing : a tremendous and steadily augmenting 
outward thrust of surplus colored men from overcrowded 
colored homelands . . . into those emptier regions of the earth 
under white political control. . . . 

"Thus the colored world ... is being welded by the most 
fundamental of instincts, the instinct of self-preservation, into 
a common solidarity of feeling against the dominant white 
man." 

What can be said of this forecast ? Is the evidence in 
its favor sound? Will it endure severe analysis? For- 
tunately it will not. It is based on estimates and sta- 
tistical methods not unlike those which we found Mr. 
Arthur Brisbane using when he told us the United States 
could feed 700,000,000 people. As Mr. Stoddard's entire 
argument is erected upon such figures and inferences, it 
will be enlightening to cite one clear and significant case 
of his method before we take up the voider problem of 
anticipating the future of world population. 

How does Mr. Stoddard arrive at his conclusion that 
the yellows and browns are increasing so rapidly, as 
compared with the whites? He begins by stating that 
Japan is increasing at the rate of about 800,000 per 
year. Now this is incorrect. The most carefully 
checked estimates reduce this number to anywhere be- 



S14 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tween 600,000 and 700,000, and the first Japanese census, 
now being announced, confirms them. But this error is 
slight in comparison with the manner in which Mr. 
Stoddard uses the Japanese figure as a basis for esti- 
mating the growth of Chinese population. He admits, 
of course, that China has no vital statistics, but goes on 
to say that her annual increase, at the Japanese rate, 
would be 6,000,000. And he leaves his reader with this 
statement unqualified and unsupplemented. The reader 
who is not fond of analyzing statistics has to take it at 
face value and build his thoughts around it. 

Now, without plunging into any technicalities, we can 
point out many facts which even Mr. Stoddard should 
have known and sensed as extremely significant. To 
begin with, Japan is wholly a temperate-zone country in 
which the natural hazards of infancy are very much 
slighter than those in all of South China and a good part 
of North China. Even if both countries were equal with 
respect to the care of infants, the probabilities are that 
more Japanese babies would survive and grow up. But 
the countries are far from equal in the care of children. 
As Mr. Stoddard should know, the Japanese Government 
is a highly organized power devoted to the well being of 
its people ; it has introduced Western sanitation and hy- 
giene, local hospitals and nurses, and other improvements 
making for public health. This certainly increases the 
survival rate of i;^fants far above that of China, where 
there is virtually no organized health work outside of six 
or seven large cities. Another fact that Mr. Stoddard 
ought to know is that the Japanese, like most maritime 
people, are scrupulously clean and neat in all personal 
and household habits, whereas nine Chinese out of every 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? S15 

ten are unspeakably filthy. The children born in a Japa- 
nese home would, on this score alone, have a tremendous 
advantag-e over Chinese babies in the hard struggle for 
existence. Mr. Stoddard might have been expected to 
know also that in China girl babies are unwelcome and 
given little attention or even neglected altogether, while 
thousands are still strangled and thrown into the rivers. 
In Japan no such custom generally prevails. This ruins 
what little wreckage is left of Mr. Stoddard's figure. 
And we still have to add that in Japan climatic condi- 
tions affecting agriculture are very stable. Abnormal 
rainfall and excessive drought scarcely enter into the 
farmers' reckoning over the greater part of the islands. 
In China, on the other hand, torrential summers are fol- 
lowed by one or two years of total drought. One season 
the crops are washed out by the roots. The next season 
they wither in the first sprout. And then men, women, 
and children clutter the roads with their corpses, as they 
are doing at this very hour in five of the northern prov- 
inces, where, according to the American consular and 
Red Cross reports, 20,000,000 wretches are doomed to 
starv^e, no matter what efforts may be made on their 
behalf. Horrors like this happen on a smaller scale every 
few j^ears somewhere in China. 

To be blunt, it is absurd to draw any parallel between 
Japan and China in matters of population growth. Such 
misuse of statistics only adds to the burden of guilt 
which the careless journalism of both Japan and America 
must carry. 

The handling of population statistics is an extremely 
delicate task, requiring intimate knowledge of a great 
many geographical, social, and historical facts which 



316 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

affect not only the population itself but also the estimat- 
ing of it. It is prudent then to lean on the judgment 
of an expert rather than on the impressions of a jour- 
nalist. I have therefore asked Mr. Warren S. Thomp- 
son to give us his answer to the question as to who shall 
inherit the earth. This he has done in the next section 
of this chapter. Mr. Thompson's studies of population 
have been thoroughly scientific, and the conclusions he 
has reached have attracted wide attention among the 
few men who are competent to pass technical judgment 
on them. It seems to me that they deserve the fullest 
publicity, for they must alter profoundly a number of 
ideas and policies that have found vogue in America. 

MR. THOMPSON ON WORLD POPULATION 

Since a considerable proportion of the population of 
the world has never been counted, there is more or less 
uncertainty regarding the number of people in the world 
to-day. Despite this fact, it will be instructive to survey 
the growth of population during the last two centuries 
in those parts of the world for which we have data worthy 
of consideration. 

The best estimates of Europe's population near the 
beginning of the eighteenth century are those of Levas- 
seur. Using these as a basis, we find that the people of 
European origin numbered from about ninety to a 
hundred millions, distributed about as follows : 

France 19,000,000 

German Empire and Prussia 23,000,000 

England 9,000,000 

Austria 12,000,000 

European Russia 10,000,000 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 317 

Other parts of Europe and European col- 
onies from 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 

In 1910 Europe had a population of about 442 mil- 
lions, and in addition to this had sent forth colonists to 
new lands, who, with their descendants, numbered about 
140 millions, as follows: 

United States 81,000,000 

Canada 7,250,000 

Australia and New Zealand 5,500,000 

South Africa 1,250,000 

Latin America 15,000,000 

Siberia T 25,000,000 

Other 5,000,000 

Thus the population of European stock grew from 
about ninety to a hundred millions at the beginning of 
the eighteenth century to about 580 millions in the early 
years of the twentieth century. It is probably not over- 
estimating its increase to say that it was six times as 
great in 1910 as it was in 1710. During the eighteenth 
century its growth was not very rapid. Levasseur esti- 
mates that Europe's population was 175 millions in 1800; 
and, if we add to this the population of the European 
colonies, we should have a population of about 180 mil- 
lions. Speaking in round terms, the peoples of Euro- 
pean stock only doubled in numbers during the eight- 
eenth century, but more than tripled their numbers dur- 
ing the nineteenth century. 

A comparison of the growth of the peoples of European 
stock with that of other peoples is baffling. Some of 
the so-called "censuses" of China taken about 1700 show 
that it had a population of somewhat less than 30 mil- 



S18 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

lions, while those taken about a century later show that 
it had over 360 millions; more than a twelvefold in- 
crease in a century. A rate of growth which is only 
exceeded in modem times, as far as I have been able to 
ascertain, by the United States between 1800 and 1900. 
Theoretically, it is by no mean impossible for China to 
have had the increase shown by the ** censuses " ; but from 
the known facts regarding the character of the Chinese 
and the nature of their industrial sj^stem, it appears ex- 
tremely improbable that any such increase in their num- 
bers took place during the eighteenth century. It seems 
much more likely that the unsettled condition of the 
country and the failure to enumerate the families in 
large areas will account for a small number of people 
returned in their early '^ censuses." In recent years 
there has been an almost universal agreement among 
those who should know most about the Chinese that their 
numbers have generally been exaggerated in the past. 
The date which seems most worthy of credence places 
the present population of China at from 330 to 340 mil- 
lions. This is about twenty-five millions less than were 
returned by the ''census" of 1812. In the face of such 
uncertainty it seems improbable that the population in 
the territory now embraced by China and her depend- 
encies has had any unusually rapid growth in the last 
two centuries. It may have doubled in that period. 
But remembering that there has been no fundamental 
change in the basis of agriculture or manufacture in 
China during this period such as has taken place in the 
Western world, even this seems unlikely. 

The figures which are accepted by the Japanese Gov- 
ernment show that Japan's population increased slowly 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 319 

during the greater part of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries, its rate being approximately two per cent per 
annum. Of course these figures are only estimates, but 
they accord well with what we should expect, knowing, 
as we do, the conditions which in general favor or hinder 
population growth. 

Recent censuses in India show that many of the earlier 
estimates of its population were too small and that its 
rate of growth in recent years has been exaggerated as 
a consequence. Indeed, it does not seem likely that the 
population of India has grown much during the eight- 
eenth and nineteenth centuries in comparison with that 
of most European countries. 

As in China and Japan, life has not become appre- 
ciably easier in India during the last two centuries, and 
it is inherently unlikely that any very large increase in 
its population has taken place. 

What is true of the population of China, Japan, and 
India is without doubt true of the native populations of 
the rest of Asia, all of Africa, and most of the islands of 
the South Seas. There has been no great change in the 
methods of securing a livelihood in these parts of the 
world within the period of historical record, nor have 
the sanitarj^ conditions of life much improved. It is not 
reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the numbers of 
peopje living in these areas has greatly changed. In 
recent years, under the tutelage of the whites, certain 
countries, as Java, have shown a very rapid increase, 
but these are exceptions. 

We shall never approach greater accuracy in compar- 
ing the population of European stock in the past with 
that of other stocks than to accept the statement, com- 



S20 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

monly made, that from ninety to one hundred millions 
of Europeans in 1700 constituted about ten per cent of 
the total population of the world. In 1910 the 580 mil- 
lions of people of European stock constituted about 
thirty-five or thirty-six per cent of the world's popula- 
tion. If the people of European stock had continued 
to increase between 1910 and 1920 at the same rate that 
they increased between 1900 and 1910, they would have 
numbered about 665 millions at the present time. Of 
this 665 millions, from 495 to 500 millions would have 
been in Europe, and the remainder, from 165 to 170 
millions, in the lands which Europeans have colonized. 
The war checked the growth of the peoples of Europe 
so that its total population at present probably does not 
exceed from 470 to 480 millions. If we reckon it at 
about 470 millions, then the peoples of European stock 
number from about 635 to 640 millions and constitute 
slightly over thirty-seven per cent of the world's popu- 
lation, reckoning the world's population at 1700 millions 
in 1920. 

Figures 1 and 2 present in graphic form the conclu- 
sions arrived at from a study of the available data. 
They are not as accurate as we should like them to be, 
but they will help us to visualize the most important 
changes in population growth during the last two cen- 
turies. Let us now turn our attention to the probable 
future growth of the world 's population. 

Since the work of Malthus first directed the serious 
attention of students to the problem of population 
growth, sufficient progress has been made in understand- 
ing the forces at work to permit of certain predictions 
of a general nature of whose accuracy we may feel as- 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 321 



YLLLOW 

39.0 



WHITE 

NON-CUeOPCAN 

4.0 



WHITL 
10.0 




BLACK 

12.0 



35.0 



PROPORTION OF WORLD^vS POPULATION 
COMPRISED BY DIFFERENT RACE5 
1700 

Fig. 1 

sured. Malthus was the first economist to point out that 
the limits of population growth are very definitely deter- 
mined by our ability to increase the means of subsist- 
ence. This may seem so obviously true that it needs no 



322 



MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 



proof. Its significance was not realized, however, until 
Malthus went on to prove that population tended to 
increase more rapidly than man could produce the neces- 

WHITE 3.5 

NC)N-euROPE>«N 



YELLOW 27.1 

CHiMuc,jMnMcac oePCi«CNCtt& 



WHITE Z7:d 

eUROfXAM 




BLACK 74 



BKOWN 24.7 

«NOtA & MALAY PtNIN5UUk OVLTVt 



FROPOHTION or WOflLD^S POPULATION 
C0MPfek5£D BY DirrEHENT RACE5 
1920 

Fig. 2 

sities of life. It followed from this that if man were 
to avoid the hardships of famine, war, disease, etc., he 
must take measures to keep the increase of population 
commensurate with the increase of his capacity to pro- 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 323 

duce food and other necessities of his life. The fact that 
Mai thus was thinking of a social order in which the 
means of obtaining a livelihood remained relatively fixed 
does not in the least vitiate his argument. The Ioajo of 
diminishing returns comes into operation Sooner or later 
under any given system of industry, and the difficidty of 
making a living increases with the growth of popida- 
tion. 

That Malthus seemed to make no allowance for the in- 
crease in man's productive power due to the settlement 
of new lands, the development of steam and electric 
transportation, and the rise of machine industry led 
many thoughtful people to disbelieve in his whole doc- 
trine of population growth. For more than a century 
after the appearance of the first edition of Malthus 's 
*' Essay on Population" few people took his doctrine se- 
riously. What was obvious to every one was that man, 
especially the man of Europe, had tapped new resources 
and had discovered new ways of making use of his re- 
sources. 

It seemed to many that there was no limit to the num- 
ber which the earth might support. In the flush of these 
discoveries even the economists of Europe gave little 
attention to what was perfectly clear to Malthus ; namely, 
that, no matter how easy life might be for a time, it would 
be a relatively short period until man multiplied beyond 
his power to support himself in reasonable comfort if he 
did not learn to make use of *' preventive " checks. He 
was fully convinced that if man did not voluntarily limit 
his numbers by later marriages, personal restraint, in- 
creased bachelorhood, etc., nature would limit them in a 
much harsher manner by the application of the **posi- 



324 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tive" checks — famine, disease, pestilence, war, and other 
forces which make for a high death-rate. 

More and more we are coming to see that Malthus's 
position is essentially correct. Man must control the 
hirth-rate and keep his numh&rs ivithin reasonable limits^ 
or he must suffer from the hardships of a continumis and 
severe struggle with nature to get a scanty livelihood. 
There may be periods of comparative plenty for a fav- 
ored few, such as the last half or three quarters of a 
century for the people of the Western world, but sooner 
or later nature will refuse to yield abundantly to all, 
and the ''positive" checks will begin to operate with in- 
creased severity. There is very good evidence to show 
that we have about passed through our period of abun- 
dance, and that now we must take more thought for our 
future and that of our descendants. 

On Map I, showing birth rates, you will find indicated 
those parts of the world in which the practice of "pre- 
ventive" checks is coming to be an important factor in 
the control of population growth, and also those other 
parts in which the "positive" cheeks still hold undis- 
puted sway. I realize that no sharp distinction between 
such localities is accurate ; but this map will serve to im- 
press upon you how small a fraction of the world's popu- 
lation makes use of the "preventive" checks. It is not 
more than fifteen per cent at the outside, when we class 
the whole nations together; actually, the proportion of 
people who make use of them in any of these nations is 
probably not over from twenty-five to fifty per cent, so 
that it will not be far amiss to say that only from about 
five to eight per cent of the world's population makes use 
of ^'preventive" checks. Throughout from ninety -two 




325 



326 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

to ninety-five per cent of the human race, the ' ' positive ' ' 
checks alone control the growth in numbers. 

When the ''positive" checks alone control population 
growth, its rate of increase depends directly upon the 
abundance or scarcity of the necessities of life. If there 
is abundance, population can easily double in twenty- 
five years, while if there is great scarcity, it may remain 
stationary or even decrease. Digby in "Prosperous 
British India" has estimated that not fewer than thirty- 
two millions of people died directly of the result of 
famines in India during the nineteenth century. If this 
estimate of deaths directly due to famines is even ap- 
proximately correct, the total number of deaths due to 
them must have reached the staggering figures of from 
fifty to sixty millions, for disease and pestilence find easy 
prey among hunger-weakened people. In the books de- 
scribing life in China one finds constant reference to 
famines and fioods as causes of the death of vast num- 
bers of people. In a number of books there is reference 
to a great famine in the year 1877 which is supposed to 
have been the direct cause of the death of not fewer than 
ten millions in two of the smaller provinces. Again the 
Tai-ping Rebellion is said to have cost at least ten mil- 
lions of people their lives, while some authorities place 
the number at twenty millions. And the famine in 
North China to-day promises to destroy fully as many. 

Such disasters attract a great deal of attention because 
they descend upon man suddenly and kill great num- 
bers in a short space, but they probably cause the death! 
of only a few as compared with the numbers dying year 
by year in these same countries because the necessities of 
life are always hard to get. Had Malthus lived a century! 




327 



328 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

later, he could have mai^shaled an even more imposing 
array of facts than he did to show nature puts a limit to 
man's increase if man will not forestall it. 

It is quite impossible to tell what the birth-rates and 
death-rates are in those countries not having good sys- 
tems for the reporting of births and deaths, but it is 
probably not overestimating their birth-rates to sup- 
pose that throughout that part of the world in which 
the ''positive" checks prevail, the birth-rate ranges be- 
tween forty and fifty per one thousand living persons per 
annum. The death-rate probably ranges from thirtj^ to 
fifty in normal times, and in times of stress may mount 
higher. On this point, see Map II. 

The best authorities estimate the infant mortality in 
China at about fifty per cent; that is, one half of the 
children bom die before they are a year old. It is but 
little less in Russia (about forty per cent in normal 
times), and is probably fully as high in India, the Ma- 
lay Archipelago, Africa, and most of South and Central 
America. 

The data in the Japan Year-Book, 1919, show that 396 
out of every thousand children under five years of age 
died in the year 1914. This figure is not altogether 
accurate, but whatever error it contains is probably 
on the side of under-statement rather than over-state- 
ment. 

Thus we see that a very large proportion of the chil- 
dren of the world are born only to die in early infancy. 
Of those who survive infancy a great many die before 
they reach maturity; so that in most of the countries of 
the world certainly not over one third and probably not 
over one fourth of the children live to the age at which 




329 



330 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

they might reproduce themselves. With such high death- 
rates, population increases but slowly, if at all. 

On Map III are shown the rates of natural increase 
in the different countries of the world. It is clear from 
an examination of this map that the areas of high birth- 
rates and high death-rates are the areas of low natural 
increase. At the present time the countries with rela- 
tively low birth-rates and death-rates are contributing 
most largely to the world's population. 

Will this continue to be the case, or will the people 
with high birth-rates increase more rapidly in the future, 
and in time swamp the Europeans who are coming to use 
the preventive checks? There is little doubt that the 
black, brown, and yellow races will increase more rapidly 
in the century before us than they have in the one just 
past. For one thing, they are slowly adopting Western 
methods of industry, which means that they can greatly 
increase their productive capacity and thus secure the 
necessities of life for a larger population. In the second 
place, they are beginning to reach out for new lands in 
which they may plant colonies. In these two ways they 
hope to secure the sustenance for a much larger popula- 
tion than their native land will now support. 

The growth of the population in Japan during the 
last thirty or fifty years seems typical of what we may 
expect to take place in other Eastern countries as they 
adopt Western industrial methods and ideas of sanita- 
tion. In the century and a quarter preceding 1872, 
Japan's population is supposed to have increased at the 
rate of about 0.2 per cent, or twenty-seven per cent dur- 
ing the entire period. In the half century since 1872, 
its population has increased at the rate of about 1.0 per 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 331 

cent and 1.5 per cent per annum, and the population 
has increased about sixty-six per cent. These data are 
not as accurate as we could wish, for Japan has never 
taken a real census until 1920, but they give a fairly 
accurate notion of the changes in population growth 
during the last century and three quarters. The official 
data on birth-rates and death-rates for Japan show that 
the birth-rate has been increasing slowly of late years, 
while the death-rate has remained stationary. It seems 
reasonable to say that Japan really has a stationary 
birth-rate, and a death-rate that is gradually falling, in- 
asmuch as greater accuracy in the registration of births 
and deaths is being gradually attained. This is the 
natural course of events in a country like Japan, where 
industry is increasing its productivity, modem methods 
of sanitation are beginning to be adopted, and the social 
forces governing the birth-rate have been but a little 
affected by these changes. 

A more productive system of industry and an improve- 
ment in sanitary practices mean a temporary removal of 
some of the ''positive'^ checks, and population immedi- 
ately increases until a new equilibrium between people 
and means of subsistence is established. Always and 
everywhere the death-rate is a more or less direct result 
of the pressure of population on the means of subsistence. 
Where the pressure is light, the death-rate is low; and 
where the pressure is severe, the death-rate is high. 
The hirth-rate, on the other hand, is not determined by 
any such simple set of causes. It is the result of the 
complicated interaction of biological, social, and economic 
forces and does not vary greatly from year to year as the 
death-rate does. The biological forces represented by the 



SS2 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

sex instincts have not changed from time immemorial 
and are undoubtedly as strong in the French, who have 
a very low birth-rate, as they are in the Chinese, having 
a birth-rate of fifty or more. The social customs and 
traditions governing marriage and family ideas and 
standards of living, etc., change very slowly, and do not 
seem to have any immediate connection with the changes 
which may occur in an industrial system. Religious 
ideals, customary family standards, and the great inertia 
of the customs in private life will explain the slow re- 
sponse of the birth-rate to changes in the economic sys- 
tem. If it is the custom for every boy and girl to marry 
at from sixteen to twenty years of age and if the pri- 
mary object of marriage is to raise sons to look after the 
ancestral worship, and keep the family alive, then we may 
not expect to find any rapid fall in the birth-rate. 

Man seems naturally conservative regarding changes 
in the mode of his private life. It usually takes some 
great crisis to work sudden changes. Even to-day, as 
pointed out above, only a small portion of the people of 
western Europe and America practise the use of pre- 
ventive checks to population growth. And this change 
has only taken place slowly as the individual man, eman- 
cipated from the strict control of family, came to de- 
velop in comparative freedom his own modes of conduct 
and standards of living. 

There is no apparent reason to believe that the pre- 
ventive checks will come into operation more rapidly 
among the peoples of the Eastern world and the Indians 
of America than among the peoples of European stock. 
Indeed, it seems likely that the customs which encourage 
early marriage, a high birth-rate, and close, almost com- 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 333 

munal family life will succumb even more slowly in the 
East than they have in the West. These customs appear 
to be more solidified in the East than they ever were in 
the West. The ''cake" of custom is thicker and tougher 
in Asia than it was in Europe. It will, therefore, be 
harder to break through. The emancipation of the in- 
dividual person from the thralldom of the family will 
take place very slowly in the East, and we cannot expect 
to see any considerable decline in the birth-rate until 
the individual man has at least a moderate degree of 
freedom in determining his own course of conduct. All 
this means that the positive checks to population growth 
will he the only effective checks in operation in a non- 
European world during the next century and a half or 
two centuries. 

In order to realize the full significance of this, we must 
remember that almost two thirds of the world's popula- 
tion is non-European. Its birth-rate is very high. 
What its growth will actually be will depend chiefly on 
two factors: (1) the amount of new lands opened up 
for colonization; (2) the rate at which its present 
system of hand production is changed over into that of 
machine production. The opening up of large areas of 
new land in Siberia, Africa, America, and the Malay 
Archipelago to the peoples of Japan, India, and China 
might very easily result in a doubling of their numbers 
during each quarter of the next century. In taking pos- 
session of new lands, these people would not materially 
change their standards of living and customs of daily 
life, and consequently an expansion of their productive 
powers wbuld be used almost exclusively to support a 
greater number of human beings on their present plane 



834 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

of living rather than for an improvement in their mode 
of life. 

The development of machine industry, even though 
adding greatly to their productive power, would not 
cause as rapid an increase of population as the settlement 
of new lands would. There seems to be a strong tend- 
ency in industrial work to breed the desire for better 
living, probably due to the example set by the entre- 
preneur and professional classes who direct industry. 
Furthermore, industry inevitably breaks up the older 
social and economic dominance of the family and thus 
frees the individual members. Hence modem industry 
tends to develop the use of preventive checks much more 
rapidly than does agriculture. 

There seems to be no doubt that some portion of the 
inhabitants of China, India, and Japan, the Asiatic coun- 
tries which might send forth colonists in large numbers, 
is well adapted to every climate in which man now lives 
in any considerable numbers. Therefore they could com- 
pete with the European not only in the temperate zone, 
but could people the tropics of Africa, America, and the 
Malay Archipelago, where the European cannot live and 
work. At a glance on Map IV giving the density of 
population in various parts of the world, one sees that 
the territory available for settlement by these people is 
much greater than that in which the white man can 
thrive. If no obstacles were put in the way of Asiatic 
colonists, it would not be surprising to see the greatest 
migration of history take place during the century ahead 
of us. The 750 millions of people living in India, China, 
and Japan might easily number 6,000 millions in the 
year a. d. 2020. 




335 



BELGIUM 

NETHERLANDS 

UNITED KINGDOM 

JAPAN 

ITALY 

GERMANY 

AUSTRIA 

CHINA 

FRANCE I 

INDIA I 

HUNGARY 

SPAIN 

RUSSIA-EUROPEAN 

UNITED STATES 




RELATIVE DENSITY OF POPULATION 
PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES 1910-20 



336 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 337 

It is quite clear, however, that there are many ob- 
stacles to the extensive migration of these peoples. Cus- 
toms and traditions bind them to their home lands. It 
would take some time — perhaps four or five generations 
under favoring conditions — for these social restrictions 
on colonization to break down in the case of the Chinese. 
In the case of the Japanese these restrictions are not 
very strong and are already passing away. Among the 
Hindus they still have great influence, but are still being 
rapidly dissipated. 

Again, the white man has already taken vigorous ac- 
tion to prevent the colonization by these peoples in coun- 
tries in which he can work. How consistently he will 
pursue the policy of keeping the temperate climates of 
Europe and America, Africa, Australia, and northern 
Asia for himself, no one can say, but it seems likely that 
his efforts along this line will increase rather than dimin- 
ish. There is no good reason to suppose that he could not 
be successful in his efforts ; but his attempts to dominate 
the tropics may be less fortunate. 

In the third place, the growth of the nationalistic spirit 
among these Eastern peoples may lead their governments 
to encourage them to stay within the boundaries of their 
respective countries or to push into the adjacent territory 
of their neighbors. Such a policy might conceivably lead 
to armed conflicts that would keep the Asiatic powers 
from pursuing any aggressive colonization projects out- 
side of Asia for several generations. 

In the fourth place, there is the possibility of a com- 
bination of the more self-conscious of the yellow, brown, 
and black races against the domination of the white race. 
It seems, however, that such an event is in the dim future 



338 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

and that we need give it no consideration at present. 
Perhaps by the time that it would be possible for such a 
grouping of peoples to be effected, we should have 
learned how to get along better together than we do at 
present. 

There will probably be no great change in the rate of 
population growth among the non-European peoples in 
the next three or four generations. As mentioned above, 
they will probably reduce their death-rates, thus raising 
the rate of natural increase, but this will take place 
slowly and need not occasion us alarm. The immediate 
future holds no promise of such sudden easing of the 
positive checks. The whites will not allow their lands 
to be colonized by other races, and the process of taking 
possession of the tropics and new continents will prove 
exceedingly costly in human lives even when done by 
Chinese, Hindus, and Japanese. 

The future growth of the black race is even more un- 
certain than that of the yellow and brown races. The 
black man has shown no inclination to increase the pro- 
ductivity of his land either by more steady industry or 
by the adoption of the white man's inventions. Within 
historical times he has never ventured abroad except un- 
der compulsion. In contact with the white man he con- 
tracts vices that threaten to destroy him. It would not 
be surprising if the black race were to die out or be ab- 
sorbed into other races. The brown and yellow races 
do not manifest the objection to intermarriage with the 
black race that the white man does. It does not seem 
unlikely, in any event, that the black race will increase 
very rapidly. Except in the Southern States, the negro 



WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH? 339 



has probably not increased during the last few centuries. 

The future growth of the peoples of European stock is 
less uncertain than that of the non-European peoples. 
There is little reason to doubt that the birth-rate among 
the European will continue to fall, although the decline 
will probably be slower than it was during the last cen- 
tury. On the other hand, the death-rate will probably 
fall almost as rapidly as the birth-rate for the next three 
or four decades, so that once Europe begins to recover 
from her present chaos, its population will increase al- 
most as rapidly as in the last three or four decades. 
From some time in the third quarter of this century it 
is likely that the rate of increase of European stock will 
decline appreciably. It may not be more than half its 
present rate by the end of the century. But even if this 
should be the case, the people of European stock will be 
increasing more rapidly than those of other stocks. 
There is a very good reason to believe that Europeans 
will constitute a larger proportion of the world's popula- 
tion a century hence than they do at present. 

Thus we need not fear for the position of the white 
race in the world. There has been much ill-considered 
talk about race suicide in this country. The alleged dan- 
ger of the white race being swamped by the other races 
is largely illusory. // ive allow ourselves to hecome the 
remnant of a dying race, it will he because we are sa 
short-sighted as to enter into competition with races hav- 
ing lower standards of living. We are able to protect 
our natural resources and our standards of living from 
exploitation by other races, but we must set about the 
matter systematically and work out intelligent policies. 



340 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

We must think about the future of the race and less about 
the immediate profits to be made by exploiting our re- 
sources with the aid of cheap labor. 

The white race as a whole is increasing in numbers as 
rapidly as it can take care of them and preserve its stand- 
ards of living. What is needed is not more babies, but 
a better distribution of babies among the different 
classes of the population. This is the surest way to 
progress and to the maintenance of leadership among the 
world's peoples. 

The welfare of our race demands that we study popula- 
tion in all its manifold phases. Much of the misery of 
mankind in all ages has been due to the fact that there 
were too many mouths to feed. If we are to ameliorate 
life on a large scale, we must learn how to preserve a 
balance between the number of people and their ability 
to produce the necessities of life. 



CHAPTER 24 
**THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 

MR. LOTHROP STODDARD, foUowing his own 
methods of analysis, declares that the white man 
to-day faces * ' the crisis of the ages. ' ' The so-called 
' ' Nordic type, ' ' which certain writers have fancied to be 
the supreme triumph of evolution, must either seize the 
mastery of the world or else be overwhelmed by the ''ris- 
ing tide of color." But IMr. Thompson's sober survey 
in the preceding chapter exposes this tide as a myth. 
There remains only the task of showing that the "crisis 
of the ages'* is even more completely fictitious than Mr. 
Thompson has made it out to be. 

Mr. Stoddard seems to regard the whole ' ' crisis " as a 
matter of growing population and a steadily unifying 
hatred of the white man's domination. Mr. Thompson 
realizes that there is much more to the matter than these 
two factors, but he has confined his observations chiefly 
to problems of population, about which he is particularly 
informed. To round the discussion off properly, we 
must now look at other potent influences, by far the 
greatest of which is climate. 

First of all, let us consider the possibilities of economic 
and military competition in the yellow-brown world. 
These divide sharply into two groups: the first have to 
do with competition within the territories of the Far 

341 



342 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

East and the second with competition carried by the 
Asiatics into regions now occupied by men of European 
stock. It is clear that we have here two radically differ- 
ent problems to solve. And it is no less clear that writers 
like Mr. Stoddard have ignored these profound differ- 
ences, thereby confusing the entire discussion. 

Now, our earlier study of the military and naval dead- 
lock between Japan and the United States gives us the 
general answer to the question : ' ' Can the Asiatics drive 
Europe from the Eastern markets and from political 
control of yellow-brown peoples?'* Every lesson of the 
World War seems to point in the same direction: no 
Western nation can retain economic or political power in 
the Far East any longer than the people of the Far 
East themselves choose to let them. To take a hypo- 
thetical case: were Great Britain challenged to-morrow 
by the natives of India, or even by a large minority of 
the upper commercial and political classes, the British 
flag would come down everywhere in India within six 
months. 

But when is such a revolt likely to happen ? Again our 
question divides. It is plain that discontent over politi- 
cal domination by the white man is now spreading much 
faster than is any hostility to the white man's cotton 
mills and railroads and huge investments. The British 
are alive to this fact, and some of their clearest thinkers 
in Indian affairs have told me that they are prepared 
inwardly to step out almost any time after the new 
Parliament of India settles down to business. Such a 
graceful withdrawal, however, would serve to strengthen 
their commercial position in the country; for the busi- 
ness men of India know how much their land needs from 



"THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 343 

the factories of Europe. They understand how casual 
and how thin is the new industrialism of Asia. In com- 
parison With that of the West, it is still as nothing. Of 
this, more a little later. 

There is no reason for supposing that the political 
withdrawal of Great Britain from India and the treaty 
ports of China, the evacuation of the East Indies by the 
Dutch, or the turning over of the Philippines to their 
inhabitants by our own Government would either weaken 
the white man's position in the world or materially 
strengthen that of the Oriental. On the contrary, scores 
of business men, diplomatic officials, and Americans who 
have lived long in the Far East come close to agreeing 
that, outside of Japan and North China, such an immense 
political retreat would surely throw the Asiatics back 
into demoralization and civil wars of the worst sort. 
This indeed is one of the strongest arguments advanced 
by our own American business interests against granting 
full independence to the Philippines. And, whether it 
happens to be true respecting those islands or not, it is 
partly so of India and Malaysia and, in a somewhat 
different manner, of equatorial Africa. 

All white observers in China testify that the chief 
obstacle in the way of developing a modern industrial 
and commercial civilization there is the extraordinary 
corruption of the local politicians and office-holders. 
These people interfere with legitimate business for the 
sake of ''squeeze." Factories are packed with relatives 
of the powerful bureaucrat. Payrolls are padded worse 
than a Chinaman's overcoat. Natives force themselves 
into positions of authority, through ''pull," and then 
bungle everything, while the European technical ad- 



344 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

viser twiddles his thumbs in helpless rage and watches 
tke huge investments of the white men being frittered 
away. Even the Japanese themselves, who should have 
known better, have lost millions of dollars in China in 
this very manner. 

Now, political habits like ''squeeze" and nepotism are 
very hard to break down, especially in a country where 
everybody lives so close to starvation that the fight for 
food is waged with animal cunning. Forty years of 
American prosperity have not yet sufficed to eradicate 
this same habit complex from the low pauper Irish who 
came here from a famine country and wormed their way 
into American municipal politics, to the everlasting con- 
tamination of our city life. So we may be sure that sev- 
eral generations must pass before the Chinese ward 
heelers and Tammany bosses will be driven out of their 
present strategic position and cease to be parasites on 
private business. If the European drops his present po- 
litical control, business will slip further and further into 
the meshes of corruption, and hence industrialism will 
lag, from Shanghai to Singapore, from Singapore to 
Suez. If industrialism lags, so too must militarism of 
the modern sort. The two are inseparable. We come 
therefore to the conclusion that, if the peoples of Asia 
resume full control of their political affairs in the near 
future, they will tend to fall much further behind the 
white race in both economic and military power. This, 
be it repeated, is not true of the Japanese and the north- 
em Chinese, at least in anything like the same measure 
as it holds for the rest of Asia. 

We may now look at the other problem of competition. 
What if the white man goes on building factories, schools. 



"THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 345 

hospitals, and railroads in the Far East, as he has been 
for the past half -century ? How soon will he uplift the 
Asiatics to the point of making them thoroughly discon- 
tented with their lot and starting them on a tremendous 
migration into the vast empty spaces now held by Russia, 
Austria, and the Americas? Is this ''crisis of the ages" 
already at hand? 

Frankly, I am unable to see this peril as Mr. Stoddard 
and others see it. I cannot see it even on the wild as- 
sumption that the entire white race were to devote all its 
money and energy to industrializing Asia and giving all 
Asiatics the ideas and tastes of the West. The more 
narrowlj^ I inspect even the new civilization of Japan, 
which is immeasurably superior to that of every other 
Asiatic nation, the clearer it becomes that it has barely 
grazed the surface of things. The life of Asia is still of 
the Middle Ages and will take as long reaching the twen- 
tieth century as thirteenth-century Europe required. 
Civilization is altogether too vast and too intricate a 
web of intimate, nicely adjusted group habits ever to be 
made to order by the most enterprising political hustler. 
And like all other late products of human evolution, it is 
as easy to destroy as it is hard to create. This has been 
tragically demonstrated in Europe since 1914. And I 
do not see how any student can fail to see what it implies 
with regard to the future of Asia. 

It is pretty consen^ative to state that in Europe, in 
1914, not more than five or six per cent of the total popu- 
lation were moderately civilized, in the sense in which 
we Americans understand civilization. We measure civi- 
lization by the total standard of living and the efficiency 
of the social and industrial mechanisms which maintain 



846 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

that standard. Perhaps this is not the highest and best 
method of measurement, but it is certainly more reliable 
than any other method that has been suggested. Using 
it, we find that Europe as a whole stood far below us in 
most of the essentials, such as food supply, standards of 
hygiene, care of infants, honesty and efficiency in politics 
and diplomacy, the political intelligence of the masses, 
community of interests, ease of intellectual intercourse 
through one language and one press, weakness of class 
lines, and so on. A few small parts of the continent were 
superior to us in some respects, but that advantage was 
more than offset by the appalling degradation of most 
of Eastern Europe and many Mediterranean lands. 
When Europe was five or six per cent civilized, we were 
possibly ten to fifteen per cent civilized. Now, even in 
her present demoralization and misery, Europe as a 
whole is immeasurably better off and more completely 
civilized than Asia; and probably even superior to 
Japan, though this is debatable. Her railroads are in 
ruin, but even so she has better transportation than Asia. 
Three million children are starving in the Central Em- 
pires, but in North China alone twenty millions will die 
of hunger this winter ; and India has just gone through 
a hideous famine whose toll has not yet been measured. 
Machines are worn out and factories in dilapidation, but 
still there are a hundred good ones for every one in all 
Asia. Men and women are still underfed in many dis- 
tricts where there is no true famine ; but all of Asia has 
always been undernourished, and there are tens of mil- 
lions who, from the day of their birth, have never eaten 
what we should call a square meal. 
Now, even the optimists who have studied the present 



"THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 347 

European crisis declare that the continent will not be 
able to reach the level of prosperity and social order of 
1914 in much less than fifty years. The pessimists set 
the period at a century or longer. Let us side with the 
optimists for argument's sweet sake. What does their 
testimony imply as to Asia ? It implies that 

// the inhabitants of Asia were to begin to-morrow 
reconstructing their continent with the same energy and 
the same intelligence now being used by Europeans, they 
could not hope to attadn even the level of power amS 
civilization of devastated Europe in less than two or three 
generations. And to equal the present development of 
North America, they woxdd require several centuries. 

My assumption here is absurd, of course. Asiatics 
cannot apply the same energy and intelligence to such a 
hypothetical task as the Europeans can, for the excellent 
reason that nine out of ten of them do not possess such, 
while those few who do are scattered over a dozen coun- 
tries covering areas as vast as North and South America 
combined, and have no community of interests and no 
basis of effective cooperation. They speak languages 
that differ from one another even more than English 
differs from Russian. They follow political practices 
that differ nearly as much as Bolshevism differs from 
French republicanism. They have correspondingly dif- 
ferent wants and needs. And, above all, as I shall point 
out fully in a moment, they divide into the two most 
widely differing of all human groups, the temperate-zone 
peoples and the tropical. Geographically, mentally, eco- 
nomically, and socially, the peoples of the great continent 
are held apart much more than the old feudists of the 
Balkan States. And we might as well expect the Balkans 



348 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

to rise up and outstrip Western Europe as to expect 
Asia to. Personally, I am convinced that the Balkans 
will be as far advanced as New England at least two cen- 
turies earlier than China reaches the present low level of 
Italy. 

When we reckon fairly with the political corruption, 
the inevitable losses of immense investments through bad 
management, the difficulties of language, and the absence 
of unified planning and control in all Asia except Japan 
and the Dutch East Indies, it is impossible to believe that 
things will move ahead any faster hereafter than they 
have been in the past quarter-century. And although 
the progress made in that time in Japan and North 
China has been startling, nevertheless it is as nothing 
when compared to what remains to be accomplished. 
And the prospect that it will eventually spread over all 
Asia fades into an emptj^ dream, as soon as we take into 
consideration the greatest of all factors in the situation, 
namely, climate. The most cursory study of it must con- 
vince anybody save a professional " yellow-perilist " that 
the sun will take care of the ''crisis of the ages" and 
evaporate ''the rising tide of color." 

Few observers fail to note a very close and far-reaching 
connection between man's behavior and the climate he 
works and thinks in. Many of us would go almost as far 
as Ellsworth Huntington in maintaining that tempera- 
ture and humidity set hard and fast limits to physical 
and intellectual activity, determining even the kind of 
civilization that may arise in various parts of the world. 
In his fascinating study, "Civilization and Climate," Mr. 
Huntington sums up an extraordinary array of minute 
observations covering all parts of the world ; and, what- 



"THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 349 

ever exception may be taken to some of his detailed 
interpretations, the central thesis is here overwhelmingly 
established that all extremes of either temperature or 
humidity retard or otherwise disturb the minds and mus- 
cles of men. Great heat, intense cold, desert dryness, 
and extreme moisture all prevent us from carrying on 
active, constructive work at the high level attained by 
people who live in regions where there is a moderate 
humid temperature coupled with a daily variation that 
suffices to act as a stimulant. When we apply these gen- 
eral findings to the question at hand, the results are sur- 
prising — and yet precisely in line with the common- 
sense verdicts of thousands of white men who have tried 
to operate mills and plantations in the tropics or in a 
good part of sub-tropical China and India. And we see 
how nature conspires with the white man to leave the 
mastery of the world in his hands, for better or for worse. 
Where it is hot, day and night, for a large part of the 
year, and where the air is heavj^, there even the few men 
of high natural energy cannot hold a pace equal to the 
average inhabitant of a cooler climate. The farmers in 
the fields move slowly and accomplish little. The fac- 
tory hand dawdles over his machine. Various white em- 
ployers of labor in the tropics estimate the efficiency of 
people there at from one-third to one-fifth that of the 
ordinary temperate zone worker. And students of tropi- 
cal medicine find reasons for believing that the indolence 
and sluggishness in the hot belt is a form of chronic neu- 
rasthenia. In his study of what happens to white men 
who go to the tropics to live, Huntington records three 
further forms of physical and mental disintegration be- 
sides laziness. They are loss of will power, drunkenness. 



350 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

and sexual laxity. As a matter of fact, these last two are 
merely special consequences of the first, in the main. Of 
them all, Huntington remarks : 

"The Englisli officer who returns from India is commonly 
described as 'choleric* Every traveler in tropical countries 
knows that he sometimes bursts into anger in a way that makes, 
him utterly ashamed. . . . 

"The drunkenness of the tropical white man arises in part 
from the constant heat which makes people want to drink at 
all times, partly from the monotony of life, and still more from 
the absence of social restraints. . . ." 

To which last should be added that the abominable^ 
and often infected drinking water in most parts of the 
tropics figures as a convenient excuse for endless alco- 
holism. And then both the heat and the alcoholism drive • 
the victim on to sexual degradation, of which Hunting- - 
ton says, 

"Its importance can scarcely be overestimated.. It leads to 
the ruin of thousands of northerners, even though they do not 
yield to drink, anger, or to laziness. . . . The condition of the 
native races is still worse. Everywhere within the tropics 
missionaries say that their converts can be taught honesty, 
industry, and many other virtues, but that even the strongest 
find it almost impossible to resist the temptations of sex. . . . 
Gouldsbury and Sheane, for example, say of the Zulus in 
northern Rhodesia that one of the greatest reasons why these 
people remain so backward is that their thought and energy 
are largely swallowed up in matters of sex. During the years 
when the young men ought to be getting new ideas and thinking 
out the many little projects and the few great ones which 
combine to cause progress, the vast majority are thinking of 
women, and planning to get possession of some new woman or 



"THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 351 

girl. Under such circumstances no race can rise to any high 
position." 

This startlingly confirms all the evidence about the 
negroes of our own far South. And the very same words 
might be written about the Spanish and Portuguese in- 
habitants of tropical South America, where a depth of 
sexual laxity has been reached that staggers the visitor 
from cooler climes. It is this effect of the humid heat 
which is directly responsible for the complete breakdown 
of class and color lines from Cuba to Bolivia. Some 
innocent intellectuals writing for northern publications 
have occasionally hailed this racial-social promiscuity as 
evidence of a fine democratic instinct and have held it 
up as worthy of emulation ; all of which shows how easy 
it is for educated people to make fools of themselves. If 
they had known, for instance, that the illegitimate chil- 
dren in Cuba outnumber the legitimate five to one, they 
might have paused a moment and studied the facts. 
Latin America is a cesspool, nothing less ; and thousands 
of whites there have had all their original stamina burned 
out of them. It is only in the extreme south of Brazil, in 
Uruguay, and in Argentine that the white man has held 
his own ; and those regions are temperate, not tropic. 

Parallel with this runs a curious tendency in the tropic 
and sub-tropic races to ''talk big and do little." I have 
this statement from more than a score of men who have 
lived and managed workers in India, South America, 
South China, and the Philippines. Such a habit is not to 
be construed as ordinary braggadocio. It is not moral 
weakness. It is simply the psychological result of pos- 
sessing a healthy nervous system and an active mind in 
a place where heat makes sustained physical or mental 



352 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

exertion virtually impossible. There is always the inner 
impulse to do things. This impulse is, when elaborated, 
a series of bright ideas. ' ' I will buy a farm. We must 
build a boat. It would be fine if we had a new town 
hall." And so on. When the bright ideas have all 
been developed, it is time for action. The work of the 
central nervous system is largely over, and the toil of 
the muscles begins. But here, alas, the bright ideas 
encounter a thermometer that insists upon registering 
ninety in the shade, week in, week out. The limp body 
refuses to carry out the orders of the mind. And the 
bright ideas go glimmering. This is the tragedy of the 
tropics. It is also the white man's salvation. 

In the accompanying map I have indicated roughly the 
way the whole world divides into regions of high initia- 
tive and regions of low initiative. I have further indi- 
cated those sections of the regions of high initiative 
which are now inhabited by the whites, and those now 
filled by the brown-yellows. The thinly settled deserts 
and mountain chains have been disregarded. The most 
casual inspection of the distribution brings out some re- 
markable facts. 

All of the hlack race amd nearly all of the yellow and 
brown races dwell in the torrid belt of low initiative. 

The only members of the yellow race living in regions 
of high initiative are the Northern Chinese and the 
Japanese. 

Do you not begin to see how it has come to pass, as Mr. 
Thompson has so clearly demonstrated, that so many 
millions of babies are brought into the Asiatic world, only 
to die in infancy, while among the white races the birth- 
rate is, on the whole, considerably lower and the survival 



354 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

rate immensely higher ? Is it not forced home upon yon 
that the peoples of Asia are, in their complex life habits, 
overwhelmingly influenced by the air, sun, and water of 
their environment ? And that this influence is a terrible 
one that must retard them and their descendants cruelly 
in the long, hard struggle toward life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness? 

Asia, south of the thirtieth parallel, is at a standstill, 
so far as social and political life is concerned. If you 
draw a line across the continent from Shanghai due west 
to any point well beyond India, the bulk of the yellow- 
brown races will lie south of the line, in lands where the 
heat burns the will out of almost every man, and where 
nobody expects anybody else to bother very much over 
anything. Life is cheap. Time is cheap. Thoughts are 
little flies that buzz brightly and die at sundown. 
Morals simply aren't. And not all the poetrj^ of Kip- 
ling nor the prose of Conrad can gloss over the dirt, lazi- 
ness, evil, and superstition that besmear southern Asia. 

In all the ivorld there live about 950,000,000 yellows 
and browns. Of this horde fully 700,000,000 inhabit 
the hot-humid and the hot-arid zones of low initiative. 
Only 250,000,000 dwell in the temperate zones of high 
initiative. 

Until that far-off day arrives, when science and com- 
mercial enterprise shall have devised ways and means 
of keeping the tropical laborer cool and invigorated, we 
may totally disregard the 700,000,000 southern Asiatics 
and Malaysians in our political reckoning. It is simply 
inconceivable that any organized invasion of white lands 
can initiate in this weather-stricken mass ; and it is only 
a fantastic possibility that they might join some leader 



"THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 355 

from the yellow north in such a mad enterprise. Such 
prospects can be seriously entertained only by people 
who have not minutely studied the geography of Asia 
and the psychology and physiology of tropical life. 

Arrayed, now, against the 250,000,000 yellow-brown 
group of high initiative we find, as Mr. Thompson has 
shown, something like 635,000,000 whites, of whom fully 
610,000,000 live in temperate climes and display pretty 
much the same energy and political sense a^ the North 
Atlantic peoples. To make the contrast a degree more 
accurate, we must note that the yellow-brown group is 
to-day split into two classes bitterly hostile toward each 
other from time immemorial. Some 60,000,000 Japanese 
are opposed to 18,000,000 Koreans, all eager to slay any 
Japanese if no officer is looking, and more than 170,000,- 
000 northern Chinese, who hate the spry islanders as 
whole-heartedly as the Sinn Feiner hates England. 

Having dismissed the thought of a military advance 
into lands now occupied by whites as too wild to be de- 
bated, we have left on our hands only the possibility of 
a slow infiltration, year by year, generation by genera- 
tion, into Australia, Russia, and the Americas. May it 
I not happen that the Chinese, for instance, who are now 
j overflowing at the rate of about a million a year into 
Mongolia and several hundred thousands a year into the 
Malay Peninsula and the Malaysian islands, may even- 
Itually reach Siberia and perhaps, in five or six genera- 
itions, fill that immense territory? 

Mr. Thompson has already answered this question. 

; Certainly, such an overflow might happen, if we choose 

to allow it. It lies entirely within the power of our 

governments. If blocked by adequate immigration laws, 



S56 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

backed up by sound administration, the southern Asi- 
atics will either spread into Africa — which, in my opin- 
ion, would be the salvation of that now hopeless conti- 
nent — or else they will very slowly learn to adjust their 
life habits to home conditions so as to keep their own 
numbers down and make life more nearly worth living. 
Meanwhile, the white races will inevitably act under the 
spur of their climate and their ancient commercial and 
political habits, as well as their immense opportunities, 
And with only a little increase of intelligent control over 
themselves and over nature, they will become in fact 
what they are now in promise and intent, lords of the 
world — whether they deserve it or not. 

In this calculation, Russia is obviously the obscure and 
dangerous factor. Will she block the Asiatic? Let us 
consider the worst possibility. Even if Russia were to 
throw down the bars to Asiatics, the migrations that 
would ensue would be very different from those which 
Mr. Stoddard depicts. There are two general facts 
about the movements of people that all history uniformly 
confirms. And neither seems to have entered into Mr. 
Stoddard's calculations. One is that, when under no 
compulsion (political or physical), migrants tend to fol- 
low their native isotherms with no wide variation. The 
other is that movements out of such isotherms have, so 
far as records show, been always from the cool toward 
the hot, never from the hot to the cool. The Scandina 
vians emigrate to Canada, our own Northwest, or Russia. 
Although the Italians are near good undeveloped lands in 
North Africa, very few go thither; the masses move in 
three directions, all following the Italian isotherms quite 
closely : to Argentine, to the central and southern zones 



"THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 357 

of the United States, and to the coast of Asia Minor. 
Tropical South America holds stupendous tracts of fer- 
tile soil and even passably inhabitable plateaus; but few 
are the temperate-zoners who have n-one thither. The 
entire continent is still predominantly Indian. As to- 
day, so ever in the past. Had we the space, we might 
rci'un here the gi^eat folk-movements from the earliest 
days in the Mesopotamian Valley down to the last drives 
of the old Turks into eastern Europe; and in each 
instance we should see either a shift from one place to 
another of the same general climatic type or else, less 
frequently, as in the great Teutonic invasions of the 
Mediterranean countries, a shift from cool to warm 
places. And we should find no case of a wholesale mi- 
gration from cool to tropic nor from tropic to cool. All 
Df which is no accident but rather an obvious consequence 
Df two things; first, the geographic difficulties, in both 
Asia and Europe, of passing from temperate to torrid 
districts ; and, secondly, that same stability of elemental 
life habits which I have mentioned so frequently. The 
bodily adjustments to food intake, food assimilation, 
ileep, work, thinking, and so on are profoundly different 
in cool and in hot regions. And man instinctively re- 
jents and resists anything that forces him to change them 
jven when the change does not seriously affect his health, 
IS it often does. 

This is why we need never fear that India and South 
I!hina will ever send their millions of superfluous humans 
nto Russia and Europe. These hordes will move around 
he torrid belt. The Hindu started out for Africa only 
i few years ago and would now be there in masses but 
'or the outcry of the whites in Cape Colony, who saw 



358 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

themselves being drowned out and forthwith raised the 
bars against the wanderer. Some day those bars must 
come down ; and when they do, the Dark Continent will 
begin changing from black to brown, to its own great 
gain. Eventually thf^ south Chinese will probably filter 
into tropical South America, as they are now moving 
again into Cuba. And they may even crowd into Mex- 
ico and there greatly improve the country by their amaz- 
ing perseverance and thrift. Whether Hindu and 
Chinaman ever succeed in breaking into the terrible trop- 
ics of northern Australia remains to be seen. Certain 
it is, though, that no white Australians will ever thrive 
there. 

These same general principles of migration lead to the 
conclusion that the temperate-zone yellow peoples of 
Japan and North China will certainly follow the path of 
least resistance westward into Mongolia and Siberia just 
as long and just as far as they can push 'on by hook or by 
crook. This is as sure as to-morrow's sunrise. And we 
ought to accept it as one of the fundamental facts on 
which we must build our national policy with respect to 
these alert, energetic, and brilliant cool-weather Asiatics. 
Whatever we may believe as to racial differences, we 
have to admit that the environment of these northern 
groups has brought out in them all of those traits which 
we profess to admire most in ourselves; and these traits 
are bound to sweep them westward along the cool-weather 
belt of Asia, no matter what moves our diplomats and 
our generals make. In an earlier chapter I have pointed 
out the cool contempt with which the Japanese Govern- 
ment countered the protest of our State Department 
over the recent occupation of northern Sakhalin. And 



"THE CRISIS OF THE AGES" 359 

I do not hesitate to predict that the Japanese will pay 
less and less heed to foreign complaints as time goes on. 
In the face of the hunger of masses and the urge to seek 
a decent li\dng, all man-written law is but- a scrap of 
paper. The most you can do with it is to light a fire 
that bums up whole civilizations. 

It would be futile to conjecture what obstacles Russia 
may place in the way of Japanese and Chinese infiltra- 
tion. Nobody in America knows much about the present 
state of public opinion in that strange land. In so far 
as we can judge from the past, however, we may hazard 
the very vague guess that the Russians are friendly to 
the Chinese and welcome them in Siberia, while disliking 
the trickier Japanese, who has made himself twice hated 
by the monstrous blunders his militarists committed in 
seizing the whole of Siberia east of Lake Baikal during 
the war and running up the flag of the mikado, just as 
if annexation were completed. For some years to come, 
then, it may happen that the Chinese will trickle west- 
ward unhindered, while every political obstacle will be 
laid athwart the path of the Japanese. In sixty years 
from now the temperate-zone yellow peoples will, with 
freer expansion into Siberia than seems reasonable to 
anticipate, have doubled their numbers. There will be 
something like 500,000,000 of them, making no deductions 
for special limiting factors. And what of the whites 
then ? Will the ' ' crisis of the ages ' ' have exterminated 
them? Mr. Thompson's calculations do not suggest it. 
Neither do those of any other well informed statistician. 
In 1980 the white race will probably be running very 
close to the billion-and-a-quarter mark. And, if Russia 
gets on her feet in another twenty years, this mark will 



360 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

almost certainly be passed. For the splendid educa- 
tional pro<^ram now being carried out under grave han- 
dicaps all aver Russia cannot fail to reduce the death- 
rate pronouncedly ; but the })irth-rate, as Mr. Thompson 
ha« sliown, vv^ill remain virtually fixed for at least a 
generation or two. 

One fairly certain element in this anticipation remains 
to be stressed. It is the difficulty the Japanese find in 
adapting to the continental winters. I have already al- 
luded to this fact, which has been noted by many Ameri- 
can observers and has been dwelt upon openly by the 
Japanese themselves. The prolonged zero weather and 
the frightful winds shatter their morale very much as the 
same general weather conditions upset many whites, espe- 
cially the women, in the plains of Montana, Wyoming, 
and the Canadian Northwest. It may be taken as certain 
that no Japanese will migrate into Siberia of their own 
accord, except as traders or professional men attached to 
large enterprises, such as mines, railroads, fisheries, and 
so on. None will go as farmers, trappers, or unskilled 
laborers in outdoor work. And this will tend powerfully 
to hold down the total of yellow emigrants. 

For all these many reasons, then, we cannot advise 
anybody to lose much sleep over the "crisis of the ages." 
There are many other crises much nearer at hand iind 
considerably more perilous. One of them is the '\yellow 
peril" on our American farms. 



CHAPTER 25 
A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 

WE have now reached the end of a survey which 
must have discouraged the reader more than once, 
with its many digressions into technical matters. And 
the question confronts us : What can we, what ought we, 
do about it all ? 

This may be approached and answered in two ways. 
One is the way of the opportunistic diplomat. The other 
is the way of the scientific statesman. The opportunistic 
diplomat is a very real character. There are many of 
him. And they are in charge of the whole Japanese 
crisis, in spite of the fact that the business men and ex- 
perts of Europe and America are pretty well agreed, as 
a result of the World War, that such officials are inca- 
pable of managing large affairs. The scientific states- 
man is still an imaginary creature. But there are hopes 
that by dint of hard wishing some country will, before 
long, call him into fiesh-and-blood existence. 

Now, the opportunistic diplomat is solving the Japa- 
nese crisis at this very moment by a new ''gentlemen's 
agreement" which dodges the deeper issues, glosses over 
the present estrangements and menaces, and puts off a 
trouble which, if handled to-day in a scientific manner, 
might easily be solved, but, if deferred for many years, 
will get out of hand, precisely as our negro problem is 

361 



362 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

now out of hand forever. It wall not satisfy the white 
Californians. It will not please the Japanese either here 
or in Japan. It betrays the Filipinos, if, as is reported 
from Washington in these last days, the program calls 
for the admission of Japanese laborers into the Philip- 
pines. And it can end only by making those islands, 
Hawaii, and our Pacific Coast yellow, thereby adding a 
second unmanageable race issue to a first unmanageable 
one. 

But how might a statesman attack the problem? 
What method might he hit upon which was no mere 
** gentlemen 's agreement" but rather a scientist's ver- 
dict? I think the facts we have been reviewing give at 
least a partial answer to this large question ; and if they 
do not map the program, at least they point out the gen- 
eral direction that must be taken. 

A scientific analysis of the whole Japanese crisis re- 
veals that it is the consequence of three other crises, each 
world-wide and extraordinarily complex both in its 
causes and its possible remedies. They are : 

1. A dangerous increase of population in the white race 
and the north-temperate yellow group ; 

2. A dangerously unbalanced system of world food 
production and food distribution, in relation to both the 
distribution and the gro-v\i;h of world population ; and 

3. A dangerously rapid shift in standards of living, 
chiefly in America and Japan. 

Now, no ''gentlemen's agreement" will take care of 
the 600,000 or 700,000 extra Japanese v/ho are annually 
added to the world's population, and still less will it 
pro^dde for the extra 1,000,000 Americans. The scien- 
tific statesman squarely faces the fact that every twelve 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 363 

months Japan and the United States combined present 
him with a new city as large as Philadelphia, to be fed 
and cared for in a himdred ways. He cannot long con- 
template this appalling problem without coming to real- 
ize that uncontrolled population growth leads to war and 
famine, intensification of racial antagonisms, the propa- 
gation of many unfit types, and the elimination of many 
of the most fit. He will find that the mere piling up of 
numbers is not the highest end of human endeavor. 
Progress and achievement are dependent upon making 
the most complete possible use of the spiritual resources 
of men rather than upon filling the earth with unlimited 
numbers who will eke out a precarious and miserable 
existence. 

The leaders of thought and opinion in Japan must be 
brought to realize that they cannot hope to gain relief 
from their present acute over-population merely by imi- 
tating the earlier colonial policies of the great European 
powers. That is, they cannot relieve the pressure at 
home by sending their surplus millions to far lands. All 
the evidence as to movements of population in both 
Europe and Asia points to one conclusion ; namely, that, 
as fast as men leave a country that is congested, the re- 
lief there caused by their departure stimulates either the 
birth-rate or the survival rate (or both) in a variety of 
ways ; so that in a short time the old maximum of popu- 
lation is attained, congestion sets in again, and the whole 
process is repeated. China, as well known, has been 
pouring forth men by the millions for many years. They 
are now moving into Mongolia at the rate of about a 
million a year. Many more millions have streamed south- 
ward into Malaysia, where they are dominant in business 



364 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

and have usurped many of the choicest districts. And 
yet China's population is as large as it was generations 
ago. So, too, with England. For two hundred years 
her sons left her in shiploads and built up the United 
States, Canada, and Australia ; and yet to-day the mother 
country has millions more than before this colossal emi- 
gration began. And now, even after the terrible losses 
of war and influenza. Great Britain is planning officially 
to send a million of her sons and daughters overseas to 
the Dominions, where life will be easier. 

The same can be shown of Germany, Italy, and Rus- 
sia. And the same will happen to Japan if no other 
more scientific steps are taken to wrestle with the prob- 
lem. For this reason the United States ought not to 
admit as a valid argument in favor of our accepting a 
swarm of Japanese immigrants, Japan's pressing need 
to be rid of these people. We should rather request 
Japan to take prompt steps to control the size of her 
population through birth restrictions such as the upper 
economic classes of Europe and America practise. 

Certainly the Japanese Government, if it saw fit to do 
so, could advance much more rapidly in the direction of 
scientific eugenics than our own country can. The «Tap- 
anese people lean upon their rulers more completely, 
trust them more, and take orders from them with better 
grace than do the present inhabitants of the United 
States, whose lawlessness and almost savage individual- 
ism have grown rather than declined of late. Social 
habits, especially such intimate ones as those which are 
connected with birth-rate and survival rate, suffer a 
change with extreme slowness at best ; and it is doubtful 
if they would change at any perceptible rate, were no 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 365 

laro^e organized educational campaign or no official pres- 
sure brought into action. This has been only too abun- 
dantly demonstrated in the enormous difficulties which 
eugenists of the United States have encountered whenever 
they have endeavored to abolish our medieval laws for- 
bidding the dissemination of scientific information about 
birth-control through the mails. With the almost des- 
potic power of the Japanese Government and its free re- 
liance upon the army of scientists in its employ, most 
obstacles of that sort might be swept away in a surpris- 
ingly short time. 

In continental Asia, Mexico and South America there 
is still room for surplus Japanese now alive. Thither 
they might go, and before many new generations of 
unwanted babies grow up, the Government might have 
this whole vexed problem well in hand. Such a move 
would be at once a triumph of scientific statesmanship 
and a blessing to all mankind. 

As for ourselves, first of all we must recognize the 
impossibility of Japan's reducing her birth-rate rapidly. 
That is contrary to everything we know about human 
nature. We face the fact then that, in the next thirty 
or forty years, we must do our part in making it easy for 
at least 20,000,000 Japanese to find homes abroad. The 
rational attitude is to put no obstacle in their way save 
such as may be necessary for the protecting of our own 
children. This implies that we should look favorably 
upon extensive migrations of Japanese into Siberia, 
Mexico, and South America. In none of these lands will 
they come into conflict with either a dense population or 
a highly .organized and virile civilization. With their 
unusual energy and ability, they cannot fail to improve 



366 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

all of these vast waste places and better their own lot as 
well. Morally, physically, and intellectually, the Japa- 
nese are superior to nine-tenths of the inhabitants of 
Latin America; and it is certain that they would do 
more in the way of uplifting the countries between the 
Rio Grande and Chile than any of the natives of those 
backward places will ever be able to do. 

Our own population problem must next be considered. 
It differs from Japan's in both of its fundamental as- 
pects. Japan is a genuine nation. We are not. Japan 
has a homogeneous people speaking one language (save 
for a few minor dialects) and having one set of folkways. 
We have a hundred jumbled races, speeches, folkways, 
and ideals, all jarring and as yet but little reconciled. 
We are, to be plain, the super-Balkans. In the second 
place, Japan 's population has already outgrown its domes- 
tic food supply and will soon reach the point of an ethnic 
explosion. We, on the other hand, are far from famine. 
True, the law of diminishing returns is sending food 
prices up and warning us that a day of reckoning must 
come. None the less, as Raymond Pearl's computations 
show, we still have more than a century of normal, natu- 
ral gro'^1:h ahead of us before we shall have reached the 
dead line. We have room for about 92,000,000 more peo- 
ple in our present domain. Thus our population problem 
becomes twofold: first, how shall we handle population 
in the future so as to Americanize the United States? — 
and secondly, who shall the last 92,000,000 extra Ameri- 
cans be, our own children or those of a hundred alien 
strains ? 

You must see at once that these two problems inter- 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 367 

lock at every point. And probably both must be han- 
dled together. They will eventually involve three dis- 
tinct procedures: 

1. Forcing up the standard of living of the lower eco- 
nomic classes; 

2. Putting a stop to immigration, or greatly reducing 
it ; and 

3. Scientific birth control. 

The first method is being followed by our more progres- 
sive labor unions and by many social welfare organiza- 
tions. Every move in the direction of cleaner streets, 
better school teachers, stricter medical inspection of 
school children and factory^ workers, good roads, and so 
on carries us further toward a better living standard, 
which, as I have said, is the one solid reality of Ameri- 
canism. It would be well if such Americanism might be 
formally recognized as the basis on which all law and 
social order ought to be erected. 

The checking of immigration has been agitated strongly 
of late ; but, as this volume goes to press, there are indi- 
cations that the next Congress may fail to handle this 
large and difficult matter courageously and with intelli- 
gence, so great is the pressure for the Open Door, both 
from the large employers of low-grade labor and from 
the relatives of suffering Europeans who wish to bring 
the latter over here. A scientific statesman would listen 
to both these groups dispassionately and then point out 
to them certain fundamental facts which must be faced 
if we are to avoid disaster. These may be reduced to 
the form of a dilemma. 



368 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 



THE GREAT DILEMMA OF IMMIGRATION 

No advocate of free immigration and no disciple of 
Americanism seems to have sensed the deeper dilemma 
involved in these two programs. It is as follows: 

1. If we admit large numbers of aliens to the United 
States, these immigrants will settle almost entirely in the 
cities. All the employment agencies serving our mines, 
mills, factories, and stores will bend their energies to 
keep such newcomers in cities; and all the deepest psy- 
chological forces in each immigrant will tend to keep him 
in the foreign quarter of some town, where he can meet 
men from ''Back Home," read papers in his native lan- 
guage, and eat food to which his palate is adjusted. 
Now, if these influences predominate — as they must un- 
less checked by some comprehensive and energetic legis- 
lation and private social reform — the result is bound to 
react injuriously upon 

a — American labor unions and 

b — The entire American standard of living which has 
been most aggressively maintained by those labor unions. 

The immigrant, as has been abundantly proved by our 
past experience with him, will work for less than the 
native American. A stranger in a strange land, he is 
often ignorant of his rights and his opportunities; and 
the fact that he instinctively tends to live with his own 
kind curtails his chances gravely. Social segregation 
nearly always means economic servitude, at least for some 
years. He always has been the stubbornest competitor 
of the American laborer just because he is strategically 
at a disadvantage in bargaining with prospective em- 
ployers. 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 369 

It is this fact which makes the large employer of un- 
skilled and semi-skilled labor the most ardent advocate 
of a wide-open immigration policy to-day. For five 
years he has been groaning under a steadily mounting 
wage scale and a steadily declining quality of work done. 
There can be no doubt that American workers are largely 
to blame for the intense reaction against unionism which 
is now apparent all over our country ; they have, beyond 
all doubt, been ''soldiering" scandalously and in all too 
many instances have shown themselves to be as shameless 
profiteers as their esteemed contemporaries who fattened 
off the Shipping Board. Be this as it may, though, the 
simple fact is that, if the employers succeed in forcing 
through a ''liberal" immigration bill in the winter of 
1920, industrial wages will promptly decline and unem- 
ployment among native workers will increase; at the 
same time, as the inevitable result of a huge influx into 
our cities, food prices and rents will either mount or at 
least hold their old high levels, for it is well known that 
city laborers out of work do not straightway rush back 
to the farms and grow foodstuffs, nor do real estate 
operators instantly build new tenements for each fresh 
shipload of Greeks landing at Ellis Island. Thus the 
whole present abnormal unbalance between industrial- 
ism and agriculture will be aggravated ; and so too will 
be the parallel unbalance of town and country. And it 
will become more difficult to maintain, and quite impos- 
sible to extend, the American standard of living. But 
this standard of living is the very backbone of Ameri- 
canism, as we have elsewhere shown. Remove th's stand- 
a,rd of living, and all the rest of what we call American- 
ism vanishes in thin air. It has no solid foundation and 



370 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

no nourishment. Subtract "the full dinner pail" and 
the wife's Sunday-go-to-meeting dress, and the motion 
picture show around the comer; and you have left only 
the Fourth of July, My Country, 'T is of Thee, a few War 
Savings Stamps, and the Constitution, for which no 
truckman or carpenter cares a hang and wliich we are 
all busily nullifying — from the Supreme Court down 
to the youngest moonshiner. 

2. If, on the other hand, a determined effort is made 
to prevent this dangerous congestion of aliens in our in- 
dustrial centers; and if this is coupled with sincere 
endeavors to maintain wages at a level which will per- 
mit American workingmen to go on living in their 
accustomed manner, the new immigrants will be sent to 
our rural districts and thereby be aided in leasing or 
buying farms and in getting employment as farm hands. 
Such a program carried out on a scale grandiose enough 
to prevent wholesale concentration of aliens in the cities 
would place millions of foreigners annually on our 
farms. This horde would have to be settled in racial 
groups, for inescapable psychological reasons. No 
Italian will go to a back county of Illinois where the 
farmers all speak English only and where the corner 
grocer carries neither garlic nor spaghetti. No Slav 
will tarry long in the hills of North Carolina, surrounded 
by a mountain folk who have nothing to do with him 
and his family, not because they dislike him but merely 
because they cannot talk with him and have no common 
interests with him. All recent surveys of our foreign 
population disclose the same two facts about it: the 
alien who goes to the country alone, endures a year or 
two of solitude and homesickness and then wanders back 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 371 

to the town where men of his own kind dwell ; and the 
alien who goes to the countr>^ and sticks there always 
goes along with a group of his own people and there 
creates a foreign colony precisely like the greater one 
from which they all came in New York, Chicago, or San 
Francisco. The present writer has observed such un- 
American communities all over — pure Russian villages 
in Central Florida, pure Italian settlements in New 
Jersey, Utah, and California; pure Polish farm towns 
in IMichigan, pure Galician Jewish patches in the rich 
tobacco belt of the Connecticut Valley, and pure Japa- 
nese worlds all over the Pacific Coast. And he is con- 
vinced that those critics are correct who declare that 
these thousands of alien spots are so many sources of 
confusion and cross-purposes in American social and 
political life. They are one of the two or three factors 
which have thus far prevented the United States from 
becoming a nation in the strict sense in which Great 
Britain, France, Germany, and Japan are nations. They 
have been largely responsible for our inability to work 
out a clean-cut national policy. Our 105,000,000 people 
are still — all oratory and buncombe aside — a collection of 
widely differing racial and national groups; and the 
solidarity, as well as the segregation, of these groups 
is becoming more and more pronounced since the war. 
The hope of the patriots that the war would unify 
America was a vain one. The outcome is the precise 
opposite. And all those patriotic organizations which 
were most zealous in unifying public sentiment and loy- 
alty have been the first to perceive and to admit their 
failure. 

It would be a waste of the reader's time here to 



372 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

enumerate the extensive evidences of this fact. Every 
morning's newspaper is crammed with them. The 
fierce group lo^^alty of the Irish in America has already 
made the political issues of Ireland a menacing factor 
in American politics, just as the tremendous group 
loyalty of German Americans was a mighty force in 
shaping our war policy for three years. The Russian 
Jews are one of the chief obstacles in the way of a sound 
restrictive immigration policy. The Jews and Italians 
of New York City have largely displaced the old Irish 
as a power in municipal politics and are refining upon 
the crude scoundrelism of ancient Tammany, quite after 
the fashion of Italian politics, which are probably the 
most contemptible on earth, and with the commercial 
cunning of the old Ghetto than which there is none 
shrewder in keeping within the law and still '^ getting 
away with the goods. ' ' 

One does not have to go so far as Henry Ford, in 
his ignorant and silly attacks upon the Jewish race, nor 
so far as Hearst in his vicious assaults upon the Japa- 
nese, nor so far as various Southern politicians who have 
lately vented their hatred upon Italians and all, other 
ardent Catholics from Europe: one may shun such ex- 
cesses, I say, and still see in all such survivals of alien 
race groups, customs, and language so man}^ sources of 
domestic antagonisms and misunderstandings, all of 
which make impossible a truly national program touching 
world affairs. It was just these racial forces in our 
population which, more than anything else, kept us out 
of the League of Nations. And, even when the League 
has purged itself of some obvious defects on whose pres- 
ence those racial forces relied to camouflage their real 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 373 

reasons for protest, we shall find ourselves in endless 
turmoil, whether we join the League or stay out. It is 
not at all a grotesque fear that moves some Americans 
— notably ex-Senator Beveridge — to say that we may 
expect those alien forces to break down our national 
unity in time. It would be grotesque, of course, to im- 
agine that they would do this as a part of some anti- 
American conspiracy ; and still more grotesque to fancy 
that they might be dissuaded from working for the 
interests of their fatherlands here by being lectured to, 
in school or out, on Americanism and the great need of 
their acquiring it. The efforts to "Americanize" them 
by bellowing the Declaration of Independence at them, 
forcing them to learn and use English, and making them 
stand up in the motion picture theater when the Star 
Spangled Banner is played all do more harm than good. 
These people have cultures of their own, and these cul- 
tures have become fixed life habits in all of them save 
the children. These life habits cannot be broken down, 
except by some catastrophe of the first magnitude. You 
might as well expect a New England Yankee who had 
gone to live in Japan as agent of some Boston manufac- 
turers to become a mikado worshiper and a Japanese 
jingo, as to hope to change an adult European into a New 
England Yankee. 

Now, it is bad enough to turn the United States into 
super-Balkans by dotting the countryside with villages 
that speak a hundred tongues and follow a hundred 
folkways. But there is a consequence that is infinitely 
worse than that. It is the one which Mr. Thompson 
and Mr. Mead have pointed out and which I have per- 
sonally verified by observation in several States, East, 



374 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

South, and West. The presence of such low-standard 
settlements in an American rural district regularly 
tends to drive the less prosperous small farmers out, 
under the stress of competition. Especially the young 
men and young women become dissatisfied to remain 
in a neighborhood where ''queer" newcomers speaking 
strange tongues and doing odd things reside. All the 
tremendous instincts which are blended in that complex 
which Franklin Giddings calls "the consciousness of 
kind" impel the rising generation to get out. The re- 
sults are such as Mr. Thompson has observed in New 
York State and I have seen in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
and the Japanese regions of California. The Americans 
pack up and go to the cities or — less often to other farm- 
ing regions. And the countryside becomes wholly alien. 

What the end of such a movement must be, is only 
too clear. The solid earth of America will become the 
possession of negroes, Japanes, Slovaks, Italians, and 
Kussians, all broken up into self-preserving communi- 
ties exactly as in the Balkans, or more so. The old 
Americans will become unattached mill-hands, clerks, 
drummers, and wanderers on the face of the earth, which 
is theirs no more. 

Is this a grim fantasy ? Let him who thinks so study 
the history of Central and Eastern Europe, There it 
has been enacted over and over again on more than one 
stage. And there is nothing visible in the American 
situation to change the program. 

Let us sum up then: adult immigrants cannot be 
made into Americans and they are, through no fault of 
their own and through no conspiracy, a peculiar menace 
to the development of a coherent American life. If 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 375 

they stay in the cities, they menace American life by 
lowering our standard of living through cheap compe- 
tition. If they go to the rural districts, they menace 
American life through acute segregation and the per- 
petuation of their alien tongues and institutions and 
interests. So long as the United States managed to hold 
aloof from international affairs, these alien groups did 
not interfere with our larger politics; they only inter- 
fered with our standard of living. But to-day all this 
has changed. If, then, we feel that national unity is 
of supreme importance, as a result of the new inter- 
national situation, then we must check immigration for 
some years to come. We must do the same if we feel 
that the further abnormal growth of our cities is a 
social and political menace. We must do the same if we 
wish to Americanize the farm by making the country 
attractive economically and socially to Americans. 

The intelligent Japanese, learning these facts, will 
look upon the anti-Japanese sentiment in California 
as a very insignificant ripple on a tidal wave of na- 
tional reaction against all alien groups. He will find 
less race feeling directed specifically against the Japa- 
nese than there is in New York City against the Russian 
Jew, or in the San Joaquin Valley against the Armenian. 
He will come to realize that almost every part of the 
United States has its race problem and its polygot prob- 
lem and its agrarian problem; and that, sooner or later, 
our country will have to solve the whole lot of them 
in a large way and more or less consistently. In that 
solution he may be pretty sure to find that his fellow 
countrymen will be excluded from the United States, 
or at the very least so restricted in their opportunities of 



376 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

entrance and of business here that most of them will 
seek other fields. 

What he has the right to expect is that our treatment 
of the Japanese shall not be discriminatory. He will 
be amply justified in complaining, were we to go on ad- 
mitting streams of Ruthenians, Slovaks, Chechs, and 
Italians, while barring his kind. Such a procedure 
would be inconsistent not only with our alleged ideal of 
fair play but even more so with sound national policy. 
Universal exclusion in the interests of Americanizing 
America can offend nobody. Selective exclusion will 
cause widespread irritation, as well as either or both of 
the social ills we have been describing. 

THE FOOD AND FARM PROBLEM 

Japan's food and farm problem is much simpler than 
our own, though much more urgent. She must send 
millions of peasants in short order to rich farming 
regions, firstly to relieve pressure of population at home 
and, secondly, to create her own adequate food resources 
overseas, as England and France have done. Our task 
is much harder, but we may in time solve it. We must 
make farming sufficiently profitable as an investment 
and sufficiently attractive as a way of Hf e to keep young 
men of the older American stocks in the country. We 
must make the country agreeable to American women 
whose living standards are high. We must make it a 
place where American children can grow up well edu- 
cated and well trained. Almost every tendency at 
present is away from these ideals, in spite of the sud- 
den prosperity of thousands of farmers. The city- 
ward drift grows. The shift of aliens to the aban- 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 377 

doned farm increases. The negro buys more and more 
fields every day. And tens of thousands of old home- 
steads all over East and Middle West may be bought 
for half value or even less. No sane American to-day 
would buy a farm to live on it and work it as a busi- 
ness. 

What can we do about it? There is only one sure 
answer. The States must take hold of the situation 
and follow the lead of the California Land Settlement 
Board. They must begin the building of rural towns 
complete, as Elwood Mead is now building them in the 
San Joaquin Valley. They must bring to the country 
all the solid advantages of town life, which are, as al- 
ready shown, the lure that draws men from the farms. 
Nothing can be plainer than the impossibility of any 
individual farmer's citifying the country. He can- 
not bring in neighbors of his own sort. He cannot pause 
in the midst of his own hea\y toil and organize com- 
munity centers, cooperatives, good roads societies, and 
the hundred other things that enter into civilization. 
Nor can this complex undertaking be handled by private 
corporations, for the excellent reason that the profits 
are too low to attract capital in quantity. Moreover, 
the moral responsibility for the agrarian crisis and the 
moral obligation to solve it rests squarely upon the 
Federal Government and the people of the United States. 
For it is these who have, with open eyes, brought things 
rural to their present state of demoralization. 

From the beginning, when we began giving away home- 
steads, down to the latest legislation. Congress has al- 
lowed itself to be dominated in its major policies by 
the interests of the large cities, which have been weU 



378 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

organized, well financed, and in the clear as to what they 
want. The railroads and the industries and the banks 
have managed to sway legislation, not in a corrupt man- 
ner so much as shortsightedh^ The abnormal econom- 
ics of a huge undeveloped continent has persistently 
blinded city business men to the elemental fact that 
all society rests on food supph^ all food supply comes 
from farms, all farms must be operated by human be- 
ings, and all human beings save fools want to live as 
well as other folks — and, if they don't or can't on the 
farms, the smarter ones get out, leaving the dullards 
behind and thus undermining the whole pyramid of 
civilization. A scientific statesman would have fore- 
seen this situation and planned a policy in which the 
basic interests of both town and country were equally 
active. He would not have squandered millions in the 
silly reclamation and irrigation schemes that are a 
joke in so many parts of the West. He would not have 
sent free seeds to farmers. And he would not have 
relegated the Department of Agriculture to its present 
degraded position of a mere scientific and census bureau 
in which many men of extraordinary ability are kept 
at work studying plant diseases and soil analysis and 
are not allowed, under the etiquette of bureaucracy, 
either to propose or to carry out any general agrarian 
policy that restores the balance of civilization. To- 
day, reviewing the errors of the past, our scientific states- 
man perceives that the evils wrought by Federal mis- 
management are so far-reaching that only Federal man- 
agement can correct them promptly enough to forestall 
disaster. Just what can be done toward reform will be 
suggested in a moment. 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 379 

THE STANDAED OF LIVING PROBLEM 

Japan's rising standard of living is much more seri- 
ous than our own, as a consequence of her dense popula- 
tion and the extreme slowness with which customs affect- 
ing the birth-rate change. It seems entirely within the 
bounds of possibility that the country may literally blow 
up within a decade or two in a tremendous social 
revolution, unless despotic measures are resorted to, 
either for the checking of the desire for better things or 
3lse for the emigration of millions. Now, it is incon- 
3eivable that the Japanese Government would seriously 
3onsider any attempt to hold down the living standard; 
in the first place, the average standard, as I have shown, 
is perilously low now; and, in the second place, the 
;vhole new industrial development of the country brings 
nen and women into the towns and factories, where 
:he social environment inevitably forces up the living 
standard. To interfere with industrialism and to force 
:he people back to peasantry is wildly impossible. 
There remains then only one course — quick and vast 
imigration. 

As for the United States, our rising standard of liv- 
ing is, at bottom, the predominant cause of the drift 
:o the cities; of the silly extravagance of the semi- 
skilled and unskilled working classes, whose mania for 
jilk stockings and player pianos has been gratified of 
iate and will be checked only with the greatest difficulty ; 
md finally of the discontent and moral collapse that are 
ill but universal to-day. Now, it is very easy to say 
:hat the remedy for these three interlocking evils is a 
return to the good old simplicity and puritanism of 



380 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

former days. This is now being energetically recom- 
mended by many clergymen and other professional 
moralists and reformers. But it is based on crass ig- 
norance of human nature and can never succeed. It 
also betrays unfamiliarity with the whole technique of 
progress, and hence ought not succeed. 

If there is any clearly proved fact about economic and 
social progress, it is that such progress is closely corre- 
lated with a rising standard of living. Not with such 
a standard measured merely in terms of gross quantity 
of consumption, to be sure; but rather with a standard 
whose whole pattern and structure are nicely calculated 
and scientifically tested. The fool who earns six dollars 
a day and spends half of it on fancy clothes is not 
contributing to progress. He is hampering it, of course. 
But he would be contributing to it were he to spend 
half of his wages on the most nutritious and well pre- 
pared foods, decent clothes, well aired and lighted lodg- 
ings, medical inspection, and so on, and divide the 
other half between wholesome diversions and the sav- 
ings bank. 

Taking the country at large, the normal tendency 
is to spend chiefly for true utilities; and the whole 
trend of welfare and labor legislation is in the direction 
of establishing rational patterns of life. And the re- 
sult is that American workers actually accomplish in 
eight hours of daily labor nearly twice as much as their 
British cousins do in ten hours, while their physique and 
health are incomparably superior to the poorly fed and 
abominably housed urban worker of England, as many 
Englishmen have testified. This high efiiciency has been 
raised notably of late by the American prohibition law, 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 381 

which has worried British manufacturers much more 
than our navy and our tariff have. They see our work- 
ers achieving through sobriety a level of output and 
quality that none of the drunkard races of Europe can 
bope to rival; and they fear that they will lose out in 
world trade because the moral level of Europe is still 
much too low to make possible such scientific restraints 
and hygienic improvements of entire peoples. 

This, together with many other matters too numerous 
to dwell upon here, convinces me that, just as ''the only 
cure for civilization is more civilization," so the only 
remedy for the evils of a rising standard of living is 
a still higher standard. The remedy is not any standard 
that costs more per year. But some accurately com- 
puted and tested standard. Furthermore, this standard 
must be wisely distributed, so that the difference be- 
tween town and country life is reduced to a minimum. 
In this manner, America will become self-sufficient and 
isocially sound in her agrarian foundations, and at the 
;.same time the dominant power in world trade through 
sheer individual efficiency, which comes through a skil- 
ful blending of health, comfort, leisure, and education. 



A PROPOSED PROGRAM 

The Japanese crisis can, I think, be permanently solved 
if we attack the underlying causes of it in the follow- 
ing manner: 

! 1. Dispel the belief, now current in Asia and a good 
ipart of Europe and South America, that we are secretly 
and hypocritically committed to economic imperialism. 
To this end, grant immediate independence to the Philip- 



382 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

pines on condition that the new island nation join the 
League of Nations at once. 

This move will protect the Philippines against a possi- 
ble invasion by the Japanese militarists, if the League 
of Nations amounts to anything. If, on the other hand, 
the League should prove unwilling or incompetent to 
protect one of its smaller members against aggression 
from a powerful one, the United States would then have 
adequate evidence as to the futility of the League and 
could keep out of it. Quite apart from our moral 
obligation to keep our promise to the Filipinos, such a 
move would serve two important purposes. 

2. Further to dispel the evil reputation we have as 
militarists, let us enter into a drastic disarmament agree- 
ment with Japan and Great Britain. The obstacles in 
the way of such a move are immense, and I am the last to 
belittle them. But, at a pinch, we have the power in 
our hands to force the issue. If the militarists of Eng- 
land and Japan, who are still powerful, block a dis- 
armament, we can say to them quite bluntly : ' ' Gentle- 
men, we give you your own choice between two courses. 
Either disarm with us at once, or else continue with your 
programs, and we shall proceed to build two ships for 
every one that you construct. If it is to be militarism, 
then let it be to a finish. But we warn you that, in 
such a race, you will be the first to go down in revolution. 
Your peoples cannot pay the bills. Ours can, though 
they do not wish to. When jou are overwhelmed, we 
shall then be the one unshattered power in the whole 
world. And, as you will have proved by your policy 
your own incapacity to manage civilization, we shall be 
disinclined to consult you when we take over the polic- 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 383 

ing of the world. We have neither the ability nor the 
desire to conquer the world, but we are willing to go 
as far as we can in supporting civilization and orderly 
development with ship and gun, if you force us to it." 

If we drop the silly amenities of professional diplom- 
acy and speak our minds bluntly, we shall say all this. 
And I am inclined to believe that it will carry the day. 
Let us assume for the moment that it does. What then? 

3. Thoroughgoing disarmament would save our coun- 
try something like a billion a year, allowing for a quarter- 
billion or more of continued military and naval expendi- 
ture for a restricted coast defense program and train- 
ing program. It would save Japan fully a quarter- 
billion. The British economies must be left out of our 
calculations here, as they could not figure in the read- 
justment of American-Japanese relations. 

Now, what might be done with this sum? Let me 
give you the roughest sketch of its possibilities, a sketch 
from which I deliberately omit a good many minor 
complications of financing, each of which would doubt- 
less modify the program I suggest, but would not vitiate 
its underlying policy. 

4. Japan must force up her rural standard of living 
by draining off her excess population. Were she to 
set aside an annual revolving fund of $100,000,000 to 
be used as a basis for extending credits to colonization 
companies which took Japanese to various parts of Si- 
beria, IMexico and South America and there built up 
rural settlements on land that had been properly in- 
spected, this would surely finance about $250,000,000 
of new emigrant enterprises every year ; and conceivably 
even more. 



384 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

The history of successful colonization projects, if 
viewed in the light of the very low Japanese standard 
of living and the relatively simple requirements of the 
Japanese emigrants, indicates that an allowance of 
$1,000 per colonist would be very liberal, possibly too 
much so. On this basis, no fewer than 250,000 emi- 
grants could be taken care of with each year's appro- 
priation. In five years, there would be a gross revolv- 
ing fund of half a billion dollars, which could finance 
the emigration of half a million people a year. Doubt- 
less Japan would not wish to send so many beyond 
her boundaries; so part of this immense fund would be 
diverted to domestic asjrarian colonies, the chief aim of 
which ought to be the breal^down of the evil Asiatic 
system of intensive farming, which makes slaves of the 
workers, and the consolidation of Japan's millions of 
tiny back-yard farms (of two or three acres each) into 
regional or community farms which can be worked by 
modern machinery. The faster Japan can exterminate 
her tiny farms, the faster will she approach civilization. 

5. At the same time Japan must force up her urban 
standard of living. To do this, she must simultaneously 
raise industrial wages, reduce working hours, better 
the external conditions of labor, and provide technical 
education on a large scale. All this costs money. It 
means that production costs will rise and that hence 
Japan's present advantage in certain world markets 
will melt away. How prevent industrial disaster then? 

Let the Japanese set aside annually another hundred 
million from the sum she shall have saved through dis- 
armament. Let her use this as a revolving fund pre- 
cisely as American manufacturers and exporters are 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 385 

about to employ one of the Yery same amount for the 
financing of sales to the stricken European countries. 
The American revolving fund of a hundred million will 
suffice to handle about ten times that amount of sales. 
A Japanese fund could do the same. And just as 
Europe is the obvious customer of America in such a 
credit transaction, so is Russia the logical buyer in the 
Japanese markets, at least for as much as Japan is able 
to furnish. 

True, at present, the Russians fear and hate the Japa- 
nese savagely because of their conduct in Siberia. But, 
as we assume disarmament, it would follow that such 
hostility would disappear at least to the point of making 
commercial relations possible. Out of Russia Japan can 
draw endless raw materials for her industrial develop- 
ment, and into Russia she can pour endless manufactured 
goods. What is most important, she can name a price 
which will enable her to raise her urban standard of 
living, and at the same time make good profits. 

The faintest suggestion that Japan resume trade with 
the Russians on a vast scale will, of course, infuriate 
the French investors in the old czarist government bonds 
and the French militarists who have been championing 
these investors. But into a controversy with these peo- 
ple we cannot now be dragged. There is but one thing 
to be said : no matter what has happened in the past, the 
brute fact of to-day is that the moral rights of Japan's 
seventy million toilers to find food and comfort are in- 
disputably higher and more insistent than the rights 
of any bondholders to cash their coupons. Whoever 
challenges this statement confesses himself to be a moral 
incompetent. 



386 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

6. The United States must make a similar division of 
its billion saved through disarmament, but the funds 
will have to be invested quite differently. We must 
aim to raise our rural standard of living to the point at 
which agriculture again becomes both profitable and at- 
tractive to people who maintain the best American 
standard of living; and at the same time we must keep 
the urban standard up and work slowly toward still 
higher levels. How can we couple these aims? 

First of all, we must put an abrupt end to virtually 
all immigration. On this there can be no compromise. 
We can convince both Europe and Japan that such a 
move implies no race prejudice and no narrow selfishness. 
We can make them see that we have more social prob- 
lems on our hands than we can solve, with the best of 
will, in another fifty years. We can demonstrate that 
every newcomer speaking a strange tongue and bring- 
ing alien folkways simply adds to our difficulties in 
Americanizing the United States. And I think it could 
even be demonstrated that, in the long run, the best 
thing that can happen to the Old World is to force it 
to keep its j^oung and energetic natives home, to aid in 
reconstruction. 

With the immigrant stream turned back upon itself, 
the underbidding of American labor by unorganized 
aliens is forever done away with. And the spreading 
of self-centered alien communities in our farming dis- 
tricts will rapidly be checked. We may then proceed 
undisturbed with the positive program of improving 
country life. This program must follow two main lines : 

a — Our Federal Farm Loan Board should receive 
fully $200,000,000 a year extra for a ten-year period, 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 387 

for the granting of loans to established farmers of good 
standing. Not counting the present funds of the Board, 
this would give it gross two billion b}^ 1930, all of which 
would be invested in first mortgages on the best farm 
soil of America. These mortgages would be netting the 
Treasury Department at least 5% — a very decent return. 
The policy of the Farm Loan Board, in making loans, 
should aim much more directly than it now does at 
improving the efficiency of farms and hence their earn- 
ing power. This involves the refusal of loans to men 
running small farms, say those of eighty acres or less, 
except where the specialized character of the crops 
clearly indicates a normal high profit per acre, as com- 
pared with the returns from ordinary farming. It also 
involves the granting of more loans for the purchase 
of adjacent good acreage by farmers who have proved 
that they can make money at the business and want 
to expand up to a thousand acres or more. At pres- 
ent more than one-half of all the 6,361,502 farms enum- 
erated in the 1910 census are too small to support an 
average family of five on the level of the average city 
worker. This is the chief explanation of the fact, so 
mystifying to city readers, that, in spite of the recent 
boom in farm products, the average income of the 
American farmer is still below that of the street car 
conductor and the clerk. There is little advantage in 
getting high prices for crops unless one grows enough 
of them to feed and clothe self, wife, and children. 
Wheat might go to six dollars a bushel, but what of 
the farmer who grew only five acres of it and nothing 
else but ''garden sass"? 
Now, helping the successful farmers expand would 



388 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tend to drive out the undercapitalized and incompe- 
tent farmers, whose number is legion. Thousands of 
such persons are now struggling to make ends meet. 
They ought to give up and go to town or else take 
employment on some well managed large farm. The 
faster they can be bought out at a fair price, the better 
for all of us. 

b — Farm loans are not enough to raise the rural 
standard of living. We need to extend all over the 
country the general program of the California Land Set- 
tlement Board, modified perhaps to suit varying condi- 
tions and needs. To this end the Federal Government 
should create an annual appropriation of around a 
quarter-billion which is to be used in two ways : 

i — for the reconstruction of existing farm villages 

into model rural community centers; and 
ii — for building new farm villages similar to the 
California plan at Delhi. 

In a ten-year period this fund would amount to two 
and a half billion dollars. To it must be added not less 
than a quarter billion supplied by the States, counties, 
or villages in which the Federal fund is invested; this 
by way of preventing the whole project from degenerat- 
ing into a rivers-and-harbors scandal. The United 
States must hold a first mortgage on the entire block of 
improved property until the loans have been paid off by 
the beneficiaries. 

After considering the costs of creating the village of 
Delhi, where the outlay for an irrigation system is 
exceptionally high, I believe that, taking the country 
at large and assuming that existing villages could be 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 389 

remodelled for about one-half the cost of building new 
towns, I estimate that $200,000 would adequately finance 
the necessary good roads, auditorium, storage warehouse 
or grain elevator, and other construction for any village 
on a railroad and in a good farming district where the 
natural water supply and drainage are satisfactory. 

In other words, if we spent only one sixth of our 
present proposed military appropriation on this rural 
reform, we could in ten years create 13,750 model farm 
villages. These villages would he the center of social 
and business life for between fifteen and twenty -five 
million Americans. 

And the American public would be earning five per 
cent on their total investment. 

Were the Federal Farm Loan Board to concentrate 
its loans in the neighborhood of these same 13,750 com- 
munities, the cumulative effect would be extraordinary. 
Properly finance the able farmers within the four-mile 
zone around a model community, and you have an ideal 
rural life. And you would hear no more outcries against 
the Japanese. 

7. How about maintaining and further exalting the 
standard of living in our cities? We are now hearing 
ominous prophecies of an industrial crisis. Europe 
cannot buy from our factories as we had hoped she 
would. She is too poor. We must extend heavy credit 
to her manufacturers, to prevent complete dissolution 
and anarchy over there. But with our loans those 
manufacturers will turn around and make shiploads of 
goods, which they will dump on the American markets 
and undersell our own producers. Factory after fac- 
tory will have to reduce its forces or even close down in 



390 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the face of such competition. Hence up with, the tariffs ! 
Higher and ever higher ! 

This is the reasoning of single-track minds, most of 
which are monorails. Putting up special tariffs defeats 
the whole program of reconstruction in Europe. Eu- 
rope must pa}^ us with goods or else not at all. Every 
student of international affairs agrees on that point. 
It would therefore appear that the one rational proce- 
dure is to accept those goods and then create new markets 
for those of our own manufacturers who cannot meet 
European competition, it being understood that no 
manufacturer of luxuries is entitled to the slightest con- 
sideration in such a program. 

Now Avhere could there be a vaster and a surer market 
than the richest, most energetic fifteen to twenty-five 
million American farm dwellers who, under the plan just 
outlined, would have, over and above their normal ex- 
penditures, between two and four billion dollars extra in 
ten years, all of which must be spent on basic commodi- 
ties, such as lumber, cement, iron and steel, farm im- 
plements, hardward, automobiles, tractors, glass, elec- 
trical equipment, fertilizers, and a thousand other items? 
On the most conservative calculation, the consumption 
power of this group would greatly exceed in money 
terms the total exports of manufactured goods over a 
normal ten-year period. Mark the term, manufactured 
goods. It is in the interest of these alone that some 
politicians are urging a high tariff. The clamor for 
a tariff on farm products is so misguided that I can- 
not consider it seriously here. 

It can be proved in detail by any one who has the 
time to check through the items that the surest way 



A PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL POLICY 391 

to maintain the high standard of living in our cities, 
during the long and distressing period of world re- 
construction, is to put the urban industrial workers at 
the great task of civilizing rural America. 

8. Lastly, a procedure too complex to discuss here 
at any length, namely the diversion of a round quarter- 
billion of our military appropriation to the scientific 
development of trade and industry in the entire Pacific 
area. For reason which I cannot here go into, it seems 
to me that the situation in Japan, China, Mexico, and 
our own Pacific Coast calls for a Pan-Pacific Con- 
sortium which will do, on a much vaster and less nar- 
rowly capitalistic scale, what the new China Consor- 
tium seems to be aiming at in one country. 

Men who understand the problems of the Pacific ap- 
parently agree that there is only one way to attack the 
political and economic affairs of that colossal region, 
and that is by concerted international action. The re- 
cent Pan-Pacific Congress at Honolulu came to this con- 
clusion, and so have many individual experts. Were 
the United States to join with Australia, New Zealand, 
China, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, Chile, and Can- 
ada in a program of supervising and aiding the shifting 
of populations and the development of backward dis- 
tricts, we should be going far on the road toward 
the unmistakable goal of human effort,, the goal that 
still lies centuries away, namely the intelligent con- 
trol of the world by men who have learned to control 
themselves. 



CHAPTER 26 

THE GREATER CRISIS BENEATH THE JAPANESE 
ISSUE 

THE city man, reading the preceding survey and 
program, will probably be puzzled at the close con- 
nection there drawn between the Japanese crisis and the 
American farm problem. It may even strike him as a 
trifle absurd. For this reason I must bring together, in 
the next few pages, an array of fairly well known facts 
about our agrarian difficulties, all of which go to show 
that these latter constitute the deeper crisis beneath the 
conflict which we find in Hawaii and California. To the 
American farmer, most of these facts have become com- 
monplaces ; and he may well pass them over, realizing, as 
he does so, that they have not yet been discovered, much 
less acted upon, by his brother of the town, in whose 
hands rests to-day the power of shaping our political, 
commercial and diplomatic policies. 

That America is confronted with an agrarian crisis 
which threatens the very foundation of her political 
structure is beyond dispute. Our rural population is 
abandoning the farm for the city; the present economic 
readjustment, with its sweeping reduction in the price 
of all raw foodstuffs and agricultural products, has made 
it impossible for thousands of our farmers to sell for even 
the cost of production. 

Everywhere we turn to-day we find evidence of this 
agrarian crisis. It is not altogether new and it is not 
the result of a single condition. Furthermore, it cannot 

392 



THE GREATER CRISIS 39$ 

be separated from the world crisis. What the outcome 
will be can only be surmised. 

Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas says, ' ' The farm in- 
dustry is going to pot. To-day cotton and wheat are sell- 
ing below the cost of production, bringing hardships and 
suffering to thousands of producers. Jobbers are afraid 
to buy flour, and mills are afraid to grind it." Amer- 
ica's foundation is in her farms. In 1820, 87.1 per cent 
of our population was engaged in agriculture. To-day 
forces are at work which lead Elwood Mead of Cali- 
fornia to say: ''On its human and social side, agricul- 
ture in America is breaking down. Farmers are discour- 
aged. The laborer of Anglo-Saxon ancestry is disappear- 
ing or becoming a hobo. Farm-bred boys and girls are 
going to the city." It is this last sentence which must 
first be analyzed — "farm-bred boys and girls are going 
to the city." The percentage of our population engaged 
in agriculture for 1920 was about 30 per cent as against 
the 87.1 per cent in 1820. A recent survey made in 
Ohio for the Bureau of Crop Estimates states that there 
was a net decrease of 60,000 in the number of men and 
boys working on Ohio farms for the year ending in June, 
1920, and for every man who returned to farm life dur- 
ing the year seven left the farm for other employment. 
There are 19,000 untilled farms in Michigan and 10,000 
empty farm houses. In New York State there are 24,- 
000 vacant farm houses while last year 35,000 men and 
boys left New York farms for the city. 

Turning to the annual report of the Secretary of Agri- 
culture submitted to the President on December 10, we 
find this statement, "When American agriculture begins 
to lose ground, the political stability of the nation 



394 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

is endangered. ' ' Writing further, Secretary Meredith 
states : 

"The history of agriculture seems to show that farming is in 
periodic danger of losing its grip on both capital and work- 
men and of allowing them to slip away into city industries. 
Statesmen have always viewed with alarm the tip of the scales 
from farming to industry and from country life to urban life. 
When the farm loses its balance to the city, the Nation is 
threatened with a food shortage or with dependence upon for- 
eign countries for essential foodstuffs." 

There is no doubt that the war was the greatest single 
factor in causing the movement of our rural population 
to the cities within the last four years. Hundreds of 
thousands of farm boys who were called to the war found 
a place in our urban centers upon their return. High 
wages paid by industry outbid the farmer for labor. 
Government activities gave employment to thousands of 
country-born bo\^s and girls. The farmer ascribes the 
main reason for his labor shortage to these causes, but he 
must remember that even before the war this movement 
to the city was increasing at an alarming rate. 

It may be well for the sake of discussion to consider 
the farm-owner and the farm-hand separately, although 
both the farm-hand and the farm-owner are abandoning 
country life. In any discussion the following fact must 
be kept clearly in mind : Every person who moves from 
the country to the city does so for individual reasons. 
It is a personal act due to causes which affect him per- 
sonally. There is no mass movement; there is no con- 
certed action; in no two cases are the causes exactly 
alike. It is therefore impossible to point out any single 
cause or, still more important, any single remedy. In 



THE GREATER CRISIS 895 

most cases these individual reasons may seem very trivial 
and not in any way related to great economic forces. 
*' People" are composed of a number of individual per- 
sons, and any action of people is an action of individual 
men. The reason why thousands are leaving" the farm 
for the city are human reasons, and can be analyzed and 
only discussed from the human and personal side. 

If the question, ''Why did j^ou leave the country for 
the cit}^?" is asked, each of the following would be 
typical answers. ''Because I could get more money.'* 
*' Because I had a chance to work up in a good business." 
*' Because I had gone to college and made friends in the 
city and did not want to go back to the country." "Be- 
cause I could not see anything ahead in the country." 
"Because I did not like the people I had to work with." 
' ' Because I did not like the long hours on a farm. " " Be- 
cause it was too lonesome. " " Because there was no place 
to go at night," and so on without end. In each case the 
reason is personal, and the answer must be one that 
reaches the personal side. Any movement or plan for 
getting people back to the land or stopping the trend 
toward the cities which has not back of it the human 
element must fail. Nothing ever solves all of anything, 
and no single reason explains why people move to the 
city, and no single remedy will stop it. 

Because we are dealing with human beings, we must 
look for conditions which effect human happiness and 
contentment. If a man leave a farm because he hates to 
break the ice from the bucket to wash his face, that is a 
good reason ; and if a woman goes to town because she 
wishes to gossip with neighbors or attend the movies, that 
is also a good reason for the simple fact that it is the 



396 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

reason; and to find the remedy, we must first find the 
reason whatever it may be. 

It is necessarj^ in analyzing- the problem of farm labor 
and the tendency of the farm-laborer to leave the farm 
for industry to take the point of view of the farm-hand. 
It is necessary also to recognize that there are certain 
fundamental human traits which exist in every person. 
One of the most important of these is personal ambition 
as expressed in the desire to accumulate wealth, and 
another is the desire to do as little physical work as 
possible for the amount of income secured. A man in 
entering any field of labor considers what the possibilities 
are in the future and whether or not he can ultimately 
secure a position which will bring him a greater income 
and at the same time demand less physical labor. 

It is significant, therefore, to recognize that the po- 
sition of the farm-hand offers little chance of promotion. 
Continued service or experience does not gain him any 
material advancement in income or lessen the physical 
difficulties of his task. It is true that in industry a large 
percentage of unskilled laborers or semi-skilled laborers 
are not able to reach a position which pays more than a 
mere existence wage or eliminates the hard physical labor. 
However, there is always the possibility of promotion and 
advancement, and there are always a few who succeed in 
getting better positions. The industrial laborer also re- 
ceives credit for his acquired ability, and even though 
his promotion may not be rapid in one organization, that 
experience will very often make it possible for him to 
receive credit for previous experience in another similar 
industry. With the farm-hand, however, it must be 
recognized that the prospect of promotion or the possi- 



THE GREATER CRISIS 397 

bility of accumulating sufficient capital to be anjrthing 
but a farm-hand is very remote, and certainly cannot 
be considered an incentive to a man seeking this field of 
laoor. 

Data collected during a farm-labor survey in New Jer- 
sey showing earning capacity by various ages are signifi- 
cant in bearing out this point. The average age as shown 
is between twenty-four and twenty-five years. All the 
cases were divided into five-year groups, and the aver- 
age cash wage estimated for each group. The group 
from twenty-six to thirty inclusive received the most pay, 
and from this age on the pay decreased. This means 
that men from the age of twenty-five to thirty are the 
best paid as farm-hands. This is borne out by the opin- 
ion of the farmers as to the age of men who are best able 
to do farm-work. The work is active and can be best 
performed by a younger man. This being true, it means 
that the farm-hand begins going downhill in earning ca- 
pacity after thirty years of age precisely as the Chinese 
coolie does. His added experience is of no advantage 
to securing higher wages. Such conditions cannot be 
attractive to an ambitious young man who hopes eventu- 
ally to attain a position which may afford some of the 
luxuries of life and easier work. If the farm is to hold 
the ambitious young man, it must make it possible 
for him to see a line of promotion which will lead to 
more than what he can now find on the farm as a la- 
borer. What ultimately becomes of steady farm-hands, 
who grow old without being able to accumulate anjrthing 
for their last years, is a serious problem. Certainly a life 
of service should carry with it some possible assurance of 
the future. 



S98 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

A farmer who employs a man with a large family and 
expects to keep him certainly should see that the man 
and his family are comfortably housed and that their 
living conditions are so that he may expect efficient work 
from the farm-hand. A man living in a house which is 
full of vermin, poorly protected from the weather, or 
poorly heated cannot be expected to furnish a good day's 
work. Neither is it possible for a man who finds it neces- 
sary for his children to sleep on the floor or to go without 
proper nourishment to maintain a frame of mind which 
can make him efficient. The farmer should know what 
the living conditions of his hired men are and do every- 
thing within his power and sound business reason to see 
that they are made comfortable. This need not be in any 
way a social obligation, but purely one of efficient busi- 
ness management. A farmer who is willing to move a 
farm-hand and his family into a house which he knows to 
be unfit for decent folks is overlooking one of the prin- 
ciples now recognized in modern industry to be as im- 
portant as good equipment and tools. 

This point brings up the type of tenant-houses found 
on most farms. The tenant-house must be considered 
from the point of view of the man and also from the 
point of view of the woman. The average tenant-house 
on the Atlantic Coast can be described as a two-story, five 
or six room frame-building, heated by a stove in the 
kitchen and a stove in the living-room, the bedrooms be- 
ing entirely unheated. The water-supply is usually a 
pump located in a shed by the kitchen-door or inside the 
kitchen. The lighting is furnished by kerosene lamps. 
The toilet is an outhouse located from seventy-five to a 
hundred feet from the house. This means that the aver- 



THE GREATER CRISIS 399 

age farm-laborer's house has none of the modern improve- 
ments of the last fifty years. Generally speaking, no at- 
tempt is made in constructing a house to give it any archi- 
tectural beautj^ The design is severe and ugly in the 
extreme, and there is nothing about its appearance which 
could be considered attractive. Its function is quite 
evidently to furnish a roof and rooms in which to eat 
and sleep. 

When it is considered that the house in which a family 
lives is the most concrete evidence of their social status, 
and especially in the mind of the child and mother forms 
the greatest part of their immediate world, its importance 
cannot be over-estimated. One child forms its opinion 
of another child very largely from the kind of house in 
which the child lives. One of the strongest social in- 
stincts is to have an attractive place in which to live. 
An ugly room or an ugly house will create an ugly dis- 
position and a dissatisfied state of mind. 

Every farmer will admit that fifty per cent of the un-- 
rest of farm-labor is due to the women. Many good 
farm-hands are lost through the woman becoming dissatis- 
fied and discontented with her lot. Unless the woman 
can have a house in which she can take a certain amount 
of pride and which she can feel is a suitable dwelling in 
which to live and rear her children, it is impossible for 
her to be satisfied. A farmer often expresses an idea that 
his farm-help would not keep up a good house if they had 
one. This argument is fallacious from two points of 
view. First of all, there is small incentive in trying to 
keep up a poor house; and, secondly, if better houses 
were furnished, it would be possible to secure the type of 
farm-hands who would take sufficient interest to take 



400 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

proper care of the house. This better type of farm-hand 
will refuse to live in the average tenant-houses. 

A striking example of the sound business policy of bet- 
ter houses for farm-hands was encountered in central 
New Jersey. One was in connection with the biggest 
** millionaire farmer" in Chester County. Complaints 
were heard from many farmers against this particular 
** millionaire farmer," saying that he was paying such 
high wages that it was impossible for the farmer to com- 
pete with him, and he was therefore taking the best farm- 
labor away from the regular farmer. This was carefully 
investigated. It was found that this particular man 
was paying but little more than the regular farmers of 
the district, demanding the same number of hours and 
the same character of work. The difference in wage was 
of no particular significance, but the type of houses fur- 
nished was of very great importance. The manager of 
this farm stated that he was finding no difficulty in secur- 
ing high-class farm-hands, and that in his opinion he 
was receiving more work per dollar than the general 
farmer of that community. 

A visit to a typical house bore out the statement. 
There was no question but that he had secured a much 
more intelligent and potentially valuable type of farm- 
hand than the neighboring farmers. The houses were 
being rented to the farm-hand at a figure which would 
cover only interest and depreciation, since the house was 
considered a part of the necessary farm equipment. 
These houses were furnished with all modern conven- 
iences. The women, all of whom had previously lived in 
the usual type of farm-laborer's house, were emphatic in 
the statement that they would never return to one which 



THE GREATER CRISIS 401 

had no modern improvements. The homes were all 
neatly kept, and there was striking evidence of pride in 
their appearance. From the point of view of efficient 
labor, contented employees, and a sense of contributing 
to the happiness of the farm-hands, it is doubtful if any 
better investment could have been made by this "mil- 
lionaire farmer." 

Many farmers seemed to feel it necessary to scatter 
tenant-houses in the far corners of their farm in order to 
prevent disturbances among the various families. This 
point was investigated thoroughly during the survey men- 
tioned above, and found to be without foundation. It 
is against the natural instinct of people to live in an 
islolated locality and away from other people. A per- 
son does not like to live in a house which stands by 
itself out in an open field any more than he would choose 
the middle of an open field as a place to sleep when it 
would be possible for him to get near trees or buildings. 

One large New Jersey operator expressed the opinion 
that the whole problem of employment was one of money, 
and if the farmer was willing to pay enough money he 
could get all the men he wanted. There is no doubt but 
that this is true. At the same time there is no doubt 
that there are other considerations besides money. If a 
man were paid enough money, he would be willing to 
live in a hole in the ground, but it is an assured fact that 
it would be more economical to pay him less money and 
offer him a better place to live. 

The farmer who is the most successful is the farmer 
who recognizes that he must have farm-hands if he would 
make any money himself and who is willing to furnish 
conditions which will secure his labor even in competition 



402 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

with industry. It must be remembered that working- 
people to-day are demanding better conditions as ex- 
pressed both in wage and living conditions than they were 
five years ago. It might be well here to quote from a 
speech delivered by Ambassador Geddes, who says: 

"So far only the swell of the storm centered in Europe laps 
your coasts, yet your daily press is already filled with news of 
strikes and what is vaguely called industrial unrest. ... In 
Europe we know that an age is dying. Here it would be easy 
to miss the signs of coming change, but I have little doubt that 
it will come. A realization of the aimlessness of life lived to 
labor and to die, having achieved nothing but avoidance of 
starvation, and the birth of children also doomed to the weary 
treadmill, has seized the minds of millions." 

There is nothing constructive in the argument of the 
farmer that city industries and government are taking 
away his labor. This conditions exists, and cannot be 
changed by the farmer. Neither is it of advantage to 
the farmer to allow his land to remain idle. The policy 
of not farming land simply because farm-labor cannot be 
secured at a figure which the farmer may consider suffi- 
cient is decidedly short-sighted. Not only does the value 
of the farm depreciate much more than the difference in 
the cost of securing labor would be through not being 
cultivated, but the profit of farming is also lost. It is 
true that there is an actual shortage of labor on the 
farms. This is primarily due to a culmination of cir- 
cumstances resulting in the present crisis. For years 
the farm has been backward in the opportunities and 
conditions given to its labor. It has offered no induce- 
ment to the ambitions, industrious young man who 
wishes to accumulate wealth and has no capital to 



THE GREATER CRISIS 40S 

start. As a result the best of the boys from the coun- 
try have gone to the city; not so much because the 
city pulled them as because the country and the farm 
have pushed them. 

There is no constructive value in condemning hu- 
man traits which may seem to be selfish. People are 
going to get all they can for the least possible effort. 
The farmer is prone to condemn the farm-hand for 
leaving conditions which did not offer him any pos- 
sible outlet for his ambition. He also often condemns 
the wife of the farm-hand because she is not willing to 
earn a little extra for the family by outside work. 
This point is entirely negative and can in no way bet- 
ter the labor conditions on the farm. 

Other than the question of wage, the farm-hand is 
most concerned with the long hours which are de- 
manded of him. On most farms the minimum for 
field work is ten hours per day. This does not in- 
clude approximately one hour for chores and barn- 
work. When compared with the eight-hour day of in- 
dustry, it is easy to see why the farm-hand objects to 
the long hours of the country. On dairy farms the 
hours outside of chores are usually from six to six, 
with one hour for noon. There is no reason why the 
experience of industry with shorter hours should not 
be duplicated to a large degree in farm-labor. 

It is hard to imagine any work on a farm except the 
operation of a tractor, where it would not be possible 
to accomplish as much in nine hours as in ten if the 
farm-hand had the incentive to do so. On some farms 
there is no work on Saturday afternoon during the 
greater part of the year. If the farm-hand is sup- 



404. MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

posed to work on Sunday, he should receive half a 
day at least twice a month except during the busiest 
season. This allows an opportunity to go to town and 
make necessary purchases and enjoy a change of sur- 
roundings. 

Fifty per cent of the men who remain on the farm 
to-day are worth only the minimum wage. Very often 
the damage which they may cause by lack of intelli- 
gence or indifferent work makes them a poor invest- 
ment at any figure. The farmer complains because he 
cannot get more intelligent labor, but he cannot expect 
to as long as special intelligence and ability is given no 
recognition. A man of superior ability and intelli- 
gence will not work with an inferior man for the same 
wage. Certain farms have arbitrarily paid their best 
men from fifteen to twenty-five per cent more than 
their basic pay. Contrary to general opinion, it has 
not caused any difficulty. 

The life of the large percentage of farm-hands is a 
sordid monotony of existence which allows for no op- 
portunity of expression and seems to have no outlet. 
It is hard to imagine what could be more deadening 
than an existence where every cent of money is spent 
week by week with no recreational opportunity and no 
prospect of future conditions which will make any- 
thing else possible. Unfortunately, the attitude of the 
farmer is very often antagonistic to the welfare of the 
farm-hands. This may be typified by an expression 
of a certain farmer in regard to the survey in New 
Jersey, who remarked that ''he would rather not have 
any one talk to the farm-hands, as it might start them 
to thinking." 



THE GREATER CRISIS 405 

Should a thousand young men who had left the farm 
be questioned and their answers tabulated, it would be 
possible to select certain reasons which would include 
a large proportion of the answers received. Those 
which would stand out most strikingly would be 
wages, hours, recreation, opportunity, housing, sanita- 
tion, association, education, or a combination of many 
of these. Some of these may seem purely economic, 
but most of them are social and touch the purely so- 
cial instincts which are related directly to individual 
happiness and contentment. Every social influence is 
directly related to standard of living, for by standard 
of living we refer to those things which make for com- 
fort and enjoyment. We are safe in saying, there- 
fore, that the difference in the ''standard of living" 
between the city and the country would include many 
of the individual reasons given for preferring city to 
country life. 

The social development of a country is measured by 
the standard of living of its people. America stands 
first in the world in maintaining a high standard. It 
is in this direction that almost our entire industrial de- 
velopment has striven for the last generation. 

The part this aspiration plays in the thinking and the 
deeds of the native American is powerfully described by 
Elwood Mead, who has written this little autobiography 
and criticism for us: 

"It is desirable that many young people should go from the 
country to the city. A movement in both directions is desir- 
able. The flow from the country is needed to renew the vigor 
of city life. The seriousness of the present movement comes 
from its magnitude and its causes. Landowners, tenants and 



406 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the young people are leaving the land to such an extent that in 
agTicultural states like Missouri and Iowa, less people are on 
farms than ten years ago. The loss of the population does 
not tell the whole story. In many cases the old American 
stock is leaving the farms, and its place is being taken by im- 
migrants from southern and eastern people. If he has to 
choose between becoming a member of a highly organized and 
adequately paid union in a city and competing with the coolies 
in the country, he will go to the city. Bringing in the negro 
made poor white trash out of the landless Anglo-Saxon in the 
South. Bringing into this country as farm workers the back- 
ward people of the Old World has created conditions which 
are driving Anglo-Saxons, German-Americans, Danish-Ameri- 
cans and Irish-Americans off the land. 

"To find the origin of this, we have to go back more than 
half a century to the time when we had a broad agricultural 
foundation in our great areas of unpeopled public land. 
Agriculture needed railroads and factories. Because of these 
needs, this nation wisely entered on a policy of fostering city 
industries. We gave land grants and mone3'^ subsidies to rail- 
roads, money bonuses to factories. The tariff helped build 
up the city and made the farmer pay part of the bill. We 
passed laws which gave privileges to corporations so that they 
could form great industrial combinations. Our policy of 
massed production drew the small town factory into the city, 
lessened the farmer's local market and made him dependent 
more and more on distant ones. In time, corporations be- 
came trusts; the farmer lost control of the prices of what he 
has to sell and of the things he has to buy. 

"So long as there was free land, there was a balance between 
the growth of city and country even if the wages and returns 
from farming were not equal to those of the store and factory. 
The rise in land values made up for low prices in crops, but 
when the free land disappeared and privately owned land be- 
gan to rise rapidly in pric«, the city began to make its ap- 



THE GREATER CRISIS 407 

peal to intelligent and aspiring boys and girls, the very class 
that the country could not afford to lose. 

"The present generation of farm boys has been lost, and 
we ought now to begin thinking about how we are to save tlie 
next crop. If we are to make this attempt, then a part of 
the thinking must be given to whether bringing in a million 
Chinese coolies will help keep Americans on the land. Per- 
sonally, I do not have to speculate about what would happen. 
"I am the son of a farmer and grew up on a farm in a part 
of the countiy where most of the hired labor was negroes. 
As a boy I plowed corn and dug potatoes alongside of a black 
man who had been a slave. He was paid 50 cents a day and 
out of that he boarded himself. That was the measure of my 
earning power on a farm. It made me furious every time 
I thought of it, though I love farm life and believe that I 
would have been a good farmer; but the social conditions 
created by ignorant, poorly paid farm workers drove me to the 
city. 

"My boyhood on a farm made me realize also the evils 
of tenantry. My father's farm was almost surrounded by a 
great estate owned by a non-resident. It was farmed by ten- 
ants who were Civil War refugees from the mountains of 
Tennessee and Kentucky. They were not good farmers. 
They had no interests in community affairs. The children did 
not care to go to school, had no interest in games or books. 
When they met together their talk was mainly of hunting, 
fighting or sex exploits. On rainy days nothing could be 
more dreary. There was no place to go and no one to see. 
When I went to college, I went because it was the surest road 
away from the farm. 

"Last year I saw 40 people stretched out in a row, thinning 
a California beet field. About one fourth of them were 
women ; five wore Indian turbans, fifteen the peaked hat of the 
Mexican, several had the whiskered face of the Russian and 
there was one negro. I pictured myself as an American boy 



408 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

working in that crowd. I knew I would feel like a hobo and 
if I stayed with them long enough, I would be a hobo, not 
because of the work but because of my associates. If those 
workers had been Americans, I could have talked to the man 
next to me about my plans for buying a farm or about who 
ought to be governor, but I could not talk to the Hindoo, the 
peon, the women or the negro because their habits, their 
thoughts and their ambitions were so different from mine that 
there was a blank wall between us. All the time I would re- 
alize that I was working with a crowd who were there be- 
cause they worked for small pay, were willing to live in bunk 
houses and did not resent the absence of any social status. 

^'The Hindoos are industrious. I have no doubt they are 
good citizens in India. The Mexican peon has many fine quali- 
ties but he has been oppressed for centuries and lacks educa- 
tion and ambition. The objection to the bringing in of these 
backward people to form a part of rural communities is that 
they do not fit into the picture if we are to have social and 
economic democracy on the land. 

''The time has come when we must give more attention to the 
contribution which rural life makes to human society. We 
breed magnificent hogs, but we are permitting the fine Ameri- 
can stock which settled and developed this nation to be dis- 
placed by human mongrels. 

"On Cape Cod half-breed negroes are displacing the pilgrims' 
descendants. The pioneers of California were among the finest 
examples of the Anglo-Saxon race, yet in the irrigrated area of 
this State, their children and grandchildren are being dis- 
placed by colonies of Asiatics who are clannish, who seek to 
live the life of the country they left, who every year form 
new centers and extend the old one. 

"The culture of Greece was in the city. Slaves tilled the 
land, and the nation died. The end of Rome began when sol- 
diers ceased to be farmers. 

"I do not believe that we can have a great civilization based 



THE GREATER CRISIS 409 

on a high standard of living in the city and a low standard of 
living in the country. I do not believe that we can maintain 
economic democracy unless our rural life is founded on a com- 
munity of blood. That does not mean that all our people 
must have skin of the same tint or that their ancestors must 
come from the same country, but it does mean that they must 
have an ancestry holding the same ideals and a desire to adopt 
the standard of life that prevails here." 

The whole question of farm-labor turns around the 
standard of living. Any cause, whether it be poor 
housing, lack of recreation, or the importation of an 
inferior race of people, which makes the standard of 
living in the country inferior to that of the city will 
have but one result. The American people will do 
what they have been doing — find their place in our 
urban communities where it is possible to at least strive 
for a standard of living which would be impossible in 
the country. 

The California farmer complains because he was not 
able to hire white labor. The Japanese were first able 
to gain a foothold in California as laborer on farms be- 
cause they were more reliable than white men. The 
white California farm-laborer of fifteen years ago was 
a very inferior type of workman not because he was 
not intelligent and could not work, hut because he 
would not 'have teen a farm-hand unless he was ab- 
normal in some phase of his conduct. Ninety per cent 
of them were periodical drunkards. The other ten 
per cent were only temporarily in that field. 

Let us consider the life of the California farm- 
laborer and the conditions under which he worked and 
see if it is possible to find a reason for the Japanese 



410 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

invasion and perhaps apply that same reason to the 
displacement of the American farm-hand by inferior 
European races in other regions. 

California is made up of large ranch holdings and 
smaller fruit-farms. During the harvest season men 
.are employed for only a short period at one place, and 
then move on to another job. On the large grain- 
ranches and fruit-farms the hands are usually paid a 
certain amount a day and board. Until the State Com- 
mission of Immigration and Housing took the matter in 
charge, the men slept almost anywhere. There is one 
story which, although exaggerated, expresses the whole 
scheme. A man was hired in a city for work on a 
ranch. When he arrived he asked the owner where 
he would sleep. The owner answered, "There are 640 
acres here; you can take your choice." Men slept in 
barns, on hay-stacks, or out of doors. All men carried 
their own blankets. Often only men would be hired 
who had blankets, as no provision was made for hous- 
ing them. At times they were furnished a cot to sleep 
on, but generally nothing at all. They ate in the 
*' cook-house, " surrounded by thousands of flies from 
scattered manure-piles. Their working day was usu- 
ally ten hours, and if they drove a team they had to 
feed and curry before breakfast and feed at night. In 
1911 the wage was from $1.10 to $1.25 a day and food. 
Very often some of the men were Mexicans, but colored 
help was seldom employed. 

No attempt was made to give them comfortable con- 
ditions. These men usually went to the nearest town 
about once a month purposely to get drunk and spend 
all their money. After a day or so the money was 



THE GREATER CRISIS 411 

gone, and they returned to the same job or to another 
like it. Not ten per cent of their total earnings went for 
any purpose but drink and sex exploits. I was in- 
formed by one man that he had not bought a new suit 
of clothes for twenty years. Another man who owned 
a little shack near the coast told me that he had been 
trying for two years to get past Bakersfield, but that 
each time he went to to^vn with his earnings, intending 
to buy a ticket and get home, some one asked him to 
take a drink, and he could not refuse. One drink 
settled it. 

Volumes could be written about the conditions on 
California ranches and farms as they were ten years 
ago. The Wheatfield Riots of California were directly 
due to housing conditions. It took most drastic laws 
and the police authority of the State to correct them. 
No self-respecting man who could have earned a living 
at any other form of work would have followed the 
California ranches. The conditions in the San Joa- 
quin and Sacramento valleys were the worst, and it 
may be of interest to note that it was in these regions 
that the Japanese first got their foothold because it 
was impossible to get reliable white help. 

In Kern County there was a string of ranches known 
to the "bindler stiff" (a worker who carried a 
blanket) as the ''dirty-plate route" because any man 
who stopped to ask for a meal at the cook-house had to 
wait until the regular men were finished, and then 
the cook would give him something to eat on a dirty 
plate. 

Most of these men worked on ranches because they 
could not keep sober long enough to work in a city and 



412 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

not from a natural choice for country work. Any 
young man who worked on these ranches during the 
summer was either demoralized by the influence and 
became one of the army or sought other work as soon 
as he had saved a little money. 

Nothing could have been more destructive than this 
life, and it is to the credit of the vast majority of 
American workers that labor was difficult to secure. 
During the last few years since California has been 
without saloons, this travelling worker has largely dis- 
appeared from the ranches, and would no doubt be 
found at present in the cities. White farm -labor has 
consequently been very difficult to obtain, making even 
a greater demand for the Hindu, Japanese, and Mexi- 
can, who do not demand a standard of living that the 
American strives for. Yet we learn that even dur- 
ing the last three years, which have been abnormal as 
far as a shortage of labor in all lines of work are con- 
cerned, the Valley Fruit Growers' Association of 
Fresno, with a membership of three thousand, has dem- 
onstrated beyond question that sufficient American 
farm-labor can be readily secured provided comfort- 
able housing, substantial food, properly served, and 
some recreation is provided upon the farms. 

In July, 1920, the writer spoke with the agricultural 
secretary of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce 
concerning labor problems in California with special 
reference to the Japanese invasion. He said in sub- 
stance : 

"The Japanese are able to lease land largely because the 
farmers cannot get help. Americans will not work on the 
farms because tbey will not stand for the hours and living con- 



THE GREATER CRISIS 41S 

ditions. The hardest man we have to deal with in trying to im- 
prove working conditions on our farms is the Middle-western 
farmer who comes out here and buys a ranch and just because 
he has been raised to believe that life should be all hard work 
and no pleasure he expects to get men to work twelve hours a 
day with no opportunity for recreation. People in California 
think there is something to life besides hard work, so you find 
that the lad who should be in the country is in the city, where 
he can find shorter hours and some form of pleasure." 

If the Middle-western fanner practises this method 
in California, he evidently learned it in Iowa or Ne- 
braska, which may account somewhat for the labor 
shortage in those States. 

Many people have advocated that the best form of 
ending the labor shortage would be to bring in a 
million Chinese coolies. The result of bringing in any 
class of inferior labor into farming districts can only 
have the effect of driving out the American laborer and 
American farmer as well, for as soon as this cheap 
labor is able to lease or purchase land themselves, the 
American farmer cannot possible compete with them. 
When the Japanese first came into California no one 
considered them as land-owners or producers; they 
were simply cheap labor who would put up with in- 
ferior living standards, and as such were welcomed 
by the farmer. But when they became land-owners it 
was the farmer who protested most loudly. 

There are a number of organizations in existence 
whose purpose it is to turn the flow of our European 
immigration to the farm. Without close scrutiny this 
would seem the ideal solution of our immigrant prob- 
lem. There is a shortage of farm-labor, and many of 



414 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

these immigrants were farmers in Europe. But most 
of our present immigrants are from southern Europe 
and vastly different in their customs and standards of 
living from the German, Norwegian, Danish, or Irish 
immigrants who supplied the stock of our present 
American farmer. More immigrants of this same 
stock could be easily assimilated, but a general influx 
of southern Europeans to our farms can only result in 
the displacement of our American farmers, who are 
not willing to accept the standard of living of these 
people. Unless they can accept this standard they 
cannot meet the competition of these new immigrants. 

Any one investigating the living conditions of 
Italians, who furnish a large proportion of the short- 
time harvest help in the East, must realize that our 
American farm boy cannot and does not wish to com- 
pete with these people. I have one case in mind where 
150 Italian men, women, and children occupied a 
building all during one summer which was 40 feet 
wide, 110 feet long, 10 feet high at the center, and 5 
feet at the sides, with only a single door 2V2 hy 5 feet 
at each end and not one window. The shacks and 
sanitary conditions in the cranberry-picking camps of 
New Jersey are impossible, not even the Mexican or 
negro being willing to live under such conditions. 

However, they seem at least tolerable to the Italian. 
This influx of our present type of immigrant to the 
farm is one of the direct causes of our American farm 
youth turning to the city. If America can afford to 
have our old rural Anglo-Saxon stock supplanted by 
the Latin, we are doing no harm in placing these 
people on the farm; but if we wish to maintain or re- 



THE GREATER CRISIS 415 

gain the American as a farmer, we must not force him 
to meet competition by lowering his standard of liv- 
ing. 

During the debate on the bill restricting immigra- 
tion Representative Rainey of Illinois offered an 
amendment to exempt from the provision of the bill 
immigrants who wished to enter agricultural pursuits. 
He is quoted as saying: ''But organized labor has re- 
fused to enter the field of farm-labor. Unless the 
farmers can get cheaper labor you still find that they 
will only be able to till a part of their farms with 
their wives and children and produce little more than 
enough for themselves." 

Does his suggestion mean that organized labor 
should be willing to work as cheap farm-labor and 
accept the standard of living which cheap farm-labor 
must accept? Cheap farm-labor means a mere exist- 
ence wage, as shown by the comparison of farm-labor 
budgets with estimated cost of living. To return to 
the farm as cheap-labor means losing all that has been 
gained toward reaching a better standard of living 
such as Americans endeavor to maintain. 

No self-respecting American will work on a farm as 
cheap labor, and if it is cheaper labor that the farmer 
must have, then it cannot be American labor. The 
price of farm-land, the competition with races who do 
not have the American standard, the failure of the 
country to keep pace with the city in education, recre- 
ation, and sanitary conditions, all tend to keep the 
American away from the farm. Our immigration 
policy can not be influenced by the demand for a type 
of laborer who will be willinoj to work at such low 



416 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

wages that they will force what Americans yet re- 
main on the farms to the city. Such a policy must 
be based upon issues which will have a fundamental 
and permanent effect upon our political structure. If 
we decide that the farm is the place to which we must 
send these Italians, Checho-Slavs, Greeks, Armenians, 
Poles, and Spaniards, it can be done only at the price 
of further displacement of American farmers by in- 
ferior races from Europe. 

If it were only the farm-laborers who were leaving 
the country for the city, the causes could be readily 
brought to light; but we find that farmers and sons of 
farmers are abandoning their land for city life. 
Again, however, we can say that the farmer who rents 
or abandons his farm does so for one of two general 
reasons. Either he does not like farm life or is not 
making enough money; or, again, it may be a combi- 
nation of the two, and he will say that he is not mak- 
ing enough money to offset the hardships of farm life. 
Unless he is a prosperous farmer who has a modern 
farm-house, with all conveniences and an automobile, 
the social reasons of both himself and his family for 
wishing to leave the farm will be much the same as for 
the farm-hand — the inferior standard of living in the 
country as compared with our cities. 

If it is a question of financial return, we come to 
the second phase of the agrarian crisis; namely, the 
inability of the farmer to secure an adequate and 
just price for his product. We need only to glance 
at the head-lines of our daily papers to realize the 
seriousness of the present economic readjustment to 
the farmer. For the first time in the history of 



THE GREATER CRISIS 417 

America he and his kind have been aroused to the need 
of concerted action. 

From Kansas City comes the report of the plan pre- 
sented at the International Farm Congress to organize 
every agricultural community in the nation on an im- 
mense scale to fight the farmers' battles and obtain 
''economic justice" for producers of foodstuffs and 
gain relief from an ''intolerable economic situation." 
Such an organization seems inevitable. Only through 
combination will it be possible for them to force prices 
up to a fair-profit scale. The use of cheap labor in an 
effort to reduce the cost of production can only drive 
more of our American farmers to the city, and still 
further weaken the soundness of our social structure. 
At best such action would only postpone the present 
crisis a few years, when its solution will be hopeless. 

The predicament which faces the farmers is exem- 
plified by a survey made by the University of Ne- 
braska relative to the cost of feeding beef cattle. The 
report reads in part: 

"The fact thus far brought out by the investigation would in- 
dicate that during the past two years, in the district covered 
by the survey, cattle feeding was a precarious venture, more 
likely to be unprofitable than not. There was an average loss 
per head of $3.17 on the cattle for which records were ob- 
tained in 1918-19, and of $10.69 and $14.57 on two groups for 
which records w^ere obtained in 1919-20." 

A news despatch from Washington on December 18 
tells of the steps to revive the War Finance Corpora- 
tion. Also a bill known as the Fordney Emergency 
Tariff was passed by the committee in shape for final 



418 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

action. This bill is designed as a measure to shield 
agriculturists from further price decline. The pro- 
ducts to be covered by this new bill are wheat, wool, 
mutton, cattle, flour, corn, sheep, onions, peanuts, rice, 
potatoes, long-staple cotton, cotton-seed, cocoanut, 
peanut, and soy-bean oils. An attempt was made to 
include many other products as well as manufactured 
articles in this bill. 

Dr. S. W. McClure of the National Wool Growers' 
Association made this statement to the Senate com- 
mittee: ''We are being ruined by the import of wool 
and meats. Something must be done or else it means 
universal bankruptcy in the West. There is now in 
storage 996,000,000 pounds of wool, enough for two 
years' supply." He pointed out that Argentine wool 
was selling here for nine cents a pound, while it cost 
the American grower six cents a pound to market his 
product. He gave an estimate that ninety-five per 
cent of the 1920 clip in the United States was still 
unsold. 

There is hardly a single agricultural product that 
was not selling below its cost of production on Janu- 
ary 1, 1921. Calf-skin which sold as high as $1.25 a 
pound could not be sold for fifteen cents a pound. 

What effect is this crisis going to have on the agra- 
rian situation in America? Perhaps the action of the 
Southern cotton-growers may be significant. They 
have decided to reduce the acreage of cotton for the 
season of 1921, so that the prices will be forced high 
enough to assure them a fair margin of profit. By 
controlling the fertilizer market, they have agreed to 
refuse fertilizer to any cotton-grower who will not 



THE GREATER CRISIS 419 

abide by their decision stipulating the acreage he can 
plant. This is a drastic step and economically un- 
sound from the point of view of world needs, for it 
is safe to assume that the world needs more cotton to- 
day than ever in its history. Whether the farmers aa 
a whole will retaliate by similar combines is not yet 
decided, but in any even it is certain that the present 
crisis is too severe for the farmer not to take steps to- 
ward organizations which will protect his interests. 

The American farmer must have a reasonable return 
on his labor and capital or he will refuse to produce 
more than he needs for his own consumption, or he 
may leave the farm. If he leaves, his place will be 
taken by people who can meet the prevailing prices on 
account of their lower standard of living. Unless the 
American farmer can be assured of a profit which will 
allow him to improve his living standards correspond- 
ingly with the betterment of city standards, we can 
expect nothing but to have our farms turned over to 
Japanese, Hindus, and Armenians, whose living de- 
mands cannot be compared with those of Americans. 
If it is necessary for the farmers to combine and force 
up their prices so as to allow them the profit to induce 
our American boys to remain on the farm, then such 
combines are needed. The people of the city must 
realize that the farmers are entitled to and must have 
this profit if our agrarian crisis is to be safely passed. 
There is sufficient margin between the wheat price paid 
to the farmer and the price of a loaf of bread to allow 
the farmer his needed increase if the problem of mark- 
ets is properly handled. 

The conference of the National Board of Farm Or- 



420 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ganizations held in St. Louis during September com- 
pleted arrangements for a national system of coopera- 
tive and financial institutions designed to rehabilitate 
the great industry by establishing grain handling 
centers in nine large cities, thereby eliminating the 
middleman and unnecessary speculation. The plan is 
to finance these centers through a national union of 
farm loan associations. It is only through such or- 
ganizations as these that the farmer can hope to fortify 
his position against marketing conditions over which 
at present he has no control. 



BOOK V 

EXPERT OPINIONS ON SOME PROBLEMS 
OF POLICY 



CHAPTER 27 

THE CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES OF JAPAN 
AND THE UNITED STATES 



As the whole Japanese crisis will be handled through 
diplomatic channels, in the first instance, it is important 
to survey the national policies to which the representa- 
tives of Japan and the United States are more or less 
committed. Behind these policies stand various laws, 
which must also be inspected. 

Few men have been in closer touch with all these mat- 
ters than Mr. E. T. Williams, now Agassiz Professor of 
Oriental Languages and Literature at the University of 
California. He has spent many years in China and 
Japan. He knows the languages and customs of those 
countries intimately and has a wide personal acquaint- 
ance there. His familiarity with the treaty relations of 
Japan, China, and the United States is long and 
thorough. He was for many years in charge of Oriental 
Affairs at the State Department and was sent by our 
Government to the Paris Peace Conference as technical 
adviser on this subject. 

The following report was submitted by Mr. Williams 
to the San Diego Conference on the Problems of the Pa- 
cific, August, 1920. His suggested reciprocity treaty on 
immigration impresses me as the best solution next to 
universal exclusion. 



EVERY man's relation to his social group, such as the 
clan or the state, is a reciprocal one. The group 
owes him certain duties, for it exists because it can con- 

423 



424 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

fer certain benefits upon him; and he likewise is under 
obligation to the group for the benefits received. 

The tie which binds one to a group, and the service 
rendered by the group will naturally influence our 
theories as to the allegiance to be required of the in- 
dividual man and our opinion as to the possibility of 
terminating the allegiance of the man to the group. 

Happily, most of us do not care to be released from 
our obligations to the family. In some lands, as in 
southwestern China, for instance, where the clan or- 
ganization still persists, the tie that binds one to his clan 
is regarded as no less sacred and enduring than that 
which unites him to his family. In some countries, too, 
the relation of the person to the state is held to be of a 
similar nature. 

In modern times, however, during which there have 
been large movements of population from one land to 
another and in which new states have been created out 
of heterogeneous elements, coming from a variety of races 
and nationalities, the theory of allegiance has been 
greatly modified, and the possibility of expatriation has 
been generally, though not universally, recognized. 

The doctrine of sovereignty prevailing in any state 
will indicate the character of the allegiance which that 
state will require from its citizens or subjects. Anciently, 
as Sir Henry Sumner Maine has taught us, sovereignty 
was regarded as personal and had nothing to do with 
geographical boundaries. The people of a tribe were 
theoretically of one blood, and no matter where one might 
travel, even to the ends of the earth, his allegiance was 
still due to the tribe and its chieftain. He could no more 
render allegiance to a tribe among whom he might be 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 425 

sojourning than he could worship the ancestors of that 
tribe. In fact, religion and patriotism were closely in- 
terwoven. Only by being adopted into the alien tribe 
could he give allegiance to its chief or worship to its 
gods. To-day we call this adoption ''naturalization." 

This primitive conception of sovereignty as personal 
and having nothing to do with territorial boundaries 
continued to influence political practice both in the Ro- 
man Empire in the Western world and in its counter- 
part, the Chinese Empire, in the Far East, when these 
great empires extended their dominion over distant 
lands and varying races and creeds. The emperor in 
each case was the sovereign lord, but, this being once 
acknowledged, the subject peoples were allowed to ob- 
serve their ancient customs, practise their ancestral re- 
ligions, and enforce their inherited code of laws. So it 
happened that Jews, even though living in Egypt or in 
Greece, were permitted to form self-governing colonies, 
subject, of course, to the supervision of the Roman au- 
thorities, but within these limits to compel their fellow 
nationals to observe the Mosaic code of the Jews and to 
punish those who violated it. So, too, in China up to the 
beginning of the present century the Manchus were gov- 
erned by one code and the Chinese by another, while the 
Mohammedan people of the northwest and the semi- 
civilized tribes of the southwest had their head men who 
ruled them according to their own laws. 

The modem practice of extraterritoriality, that is to 
say, the exercise by one government of jurisdiction over 
its nationals resident in the territory of another govern- 
ment, is generally regarded as dating from the capit- 
ulations granted by Mohammed II in the fifteenth cen- 



426 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tury, but while this may be the first recorded formal rec- 
ognition of the practice, the practice itself is of course 
much older. It is one that strikes its roots into a far 
distant past. When Mohammed signed the capitulations, 
he was probably not aware of surrendering any portion 
of his sovereignty. Christian Europe at that time was 
not in a position to make any demands upon the vic- 
torious Turks before whose arms the walls of Constanti- 
nople had just fallen. Bearing in mind the primitive 
conception of sovereignty as personal and not territorial, 
there was nothing surprising in the willingness of Mo- 
hammed to allow the Christians of his empire to observe 
their ancestral laws. Even before the fall of Constan- 
tinople^ European states had been accustomed to appoint 
consuls to reside in certain ports of the Turkish Empire, 
and those consuls appear to have exercised jurisdiction 
over their nationals engaged in commerce with the Turks. 

The conception of territorial sovereignty, in fact, is a 
very modern one ; it had its origin, so far as Europe is 
concerned, in the downfall of the Roman Empire and the 
rise of feudalism. The Emperor of Rome claimed a 
universal sovereignty ; the kings, princes, and nobles who 
held their dominions from him had their jurisdiction 
limited to the territories assigned to them, and not made 
to embrace the whole of a particular people. When the 
empire fell, these kings and princes continued to exercise 
their jurisdiction as before, within the boundaries of 
their provinces and idependent of any over-lord. Thus, 
as Maine has shown, men became accustomed to the con- 
ception of sovereignty as limited by geographical boun- 
daries. 

These two conceptions of sovereignty have continued 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 427 

to exist side by side. The practice of territorial sov- 
eignty is only slowly crowding out the older custom. 
When the British Parliament in 1773 empowered the 
King to erect a supreme court at Calcutta, the British 
Crown had not yet obtained the sovereignty of the soil. 
And this court was set up without any agreement to that 
effect with the titular sovereign at Delhi. In 1788 the 
United States, a new nation, untrammeled by precedent, 
nevertheless asked and received from France in the 
treaty of that year an agreement providing that ' ' all dif- 
ferences and suits between citizens of the United States 
in France should be determined by the consuls and vice- 
consuls either by reference to arbitrators or by summary 
judgment without costs." 

Hall, in his ''Foreign Jurisdiction of the British 
Crown," says that ''to the oriental mind a personal law 
is much more familiar than a territorial law," but it is 
doubtful if it was ever more familiar to the Oriental than 
in early days it was to the European. Hall had refer- 
ence to the Hindu; had he been acquainted with the 
Chinese mind, he might not have made so sweeping a 
generalization. The probabilities are that the Chinese 
arrived at the conception of territorial sovereignty he- 
fore the people of the West did, and they reached it 
through a very similar experience, the weakening of im- 
perial control and the rise to independence of states that 
had once been held by their rulers on feudal tenure. 
These rulers had always had their authority limited by 
territorial boundaries, and in their relations one with an- 
other after attaining independence made no effort to 
exercise jurisdiction over their subjects after such sub- 
jects passed within the boundaries of another state. 



428 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

When therefore in modern times the European made his 
appearance in China, the Chinese Government insisted 
upon the exercise of jurisdiction over him while in Chi- 
nese territory, and it was not until they were compelled 
by defeat in war that they consented to permit Western 
powers to exercise extraterritoriality in China. At that 
time Europeans themselves had no fixed and definite 
theories of sovereignty as territorial. Their practice, as 
in the case of the British court in India and in that of 
American consular jurisdiction in France, was decidedly 
inconsistent with the acceptance of such a theory. They 
had of course the conception of territorial sovereignty, 
but it was undeveloped, and was confused with the older 
notion of sovereignty as personal or national. 

A oompromise of these two principles prevails in the 
world to-day. We have only to read the laws of various 
European and American governments in regard to na- 
tionality to see that this is so. 

In so far as extraterritoriality is concerned there is 
general agreement. It cannot be exercised except by 
formal provision in a treaty with the power in whose 
territories such jurisdiction is to be held. In fact, ex- 
traterritoriality, except that form of it included in dip- 
plomatic privilege, has been abandoned by the powers in 
all countries where formerly exercised except in China 
and Siam. Turkey at the beginning of the World War 
abrogated the capitulations, but the Allied powers and 
the United States have never agreed to that action, and 
the treaty of peace will no doubt reestablish extraterri- 
toriality there for the Allies, and the American Govern- 
ment will no doubt claim the same privilege. 

But while the formal exercise of judicial functions in 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 429 

the territory of another state by officers of the favored 
power has been abandoned with the exceptions noted, 
the powers of the world still endeavor to retain a moiety 
of their sovereignty over their citizens or subjects resi- 
dent in a foreign country, in some cases even over per- 
sons born in the foreign country, both against the will of 
the persons concerned and in opposition to the claims of 
the foreign power involved. And this they do even while 
claiming jurisdiction over all persons born or natural- 
ized in their own territories. 

T have said that expatriation has been generally, al- 
though not universally, acknowledged. There were be- 
fore the World War only two states that refused to ac- 
knowledge it. These were Russia and Turkey. Both 
held to the old theory of sovereignty as personal, and re- 
garded allegiance as perpetual. They considered re- 
nunciation of allegiance liable to severe punishment. 
These were both backward states, but one of the most 
modern of states, Switzerland, also holds that the citizen 
of a Swiss canton cannot be deprived of his citizenship 
even though he should become naturalized abroad unless 
he makes an express request of the Swiss Government in 
writing, and first fulfils all his obligations as a Swiss 
citizen. 

A curious case occurred in 1897, when an American 
citizen, born in the United States of Swiss ancestry, paid 
a visit to Switzerland, and was held by the Swiss govern- 
ment to be liable to military service. After considerable 
diplomatic correspondence, Schneider, the man con- 
cerned, relieved himself of further annoyance by paying 
a fine and making a formal renunciation of all claims 
against the canton of his forefathers. The reason given 



430 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

by the Swiss authorities for the claim made was that the 
Swiss Constitution provides that no citizen may be de- 
prived of his rights in his canton or commune. It ap- 
pears that every such citizen in his old age or in dis- 
tress may claim aid from his commune, and those who 
go abroad, even though naturalized, are unwilling to sur- 
render this right. But this does not at all explain the 
claim against a man born in the United States. 

The law of France, also, in its original form was based 
upon the doctrine of jus sanguinis and still retains that 
for the most part. But as modified in 1889, it embodies 
a practice which is based upon the doctrine of jus soli. 
It claims as French citizens all sons of Frenchmen no 
matter where born, and also as French all born in France 
if the father was born there, and if the non-French father 
was not born in France, the son is still claimed as 
French ; if born in France, he is resident there on coming 
of age unless he then disclaims French nationality and 
proves by certificate that he has the nationality of his 
father. Moreover, the French law refuses to recognize 
as valid the naturalization of a Frenchman in another 
state until he shall have fulfilled his military duties in 
France or been released from such obligation. 

The law of the United States holds that all persons 
born in the United States are American citizens, but also 
holds that children of citizens, although bom abroad, are 
also American citizens even when continuing to reside 
abroad with their parents. This at once leads to con- 
flict, since the country of their birth and the United 
States both claim their allegiance. This conflict arises 
not only over foreign-born children of American paren- 
tage, but also over American-born children of foreign or 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES iSl 

naturalized parents, if the parents have come from coun- 
tries that claim the allegiance of such children. In the 
case of the foreign-born child of American parents, how- 
ever, the courts have recognized the right of such a child 
on coming of age to elect his citizenship, either that of 
his father or that of the country of his birth. 

Conflict has more often arisen over naturalized citi- 
zens of the United States whose allegiance is still claimed 
by the country of their birth. In many cases this con- 
flict has been avoided by treaties of naturalization, in 
which it is provided that residence of naturalized citizens 
in the United States continuously for five years estab- 
lished American citizenship, but with the reservation 
that, if military duty has not been performed before 
emigration or if crime has been committed before emi- 
gration, the person guilty of such offenses remains liable 
to trial and punishment in the country of his birth un- 
less protected by a statute of limitation effective in that 
country. 

Thus we see that the conflict is not peculiar to our 
relations with the Orient; but the fact that Orientals 
are ineligible to naturalization makes the problem of 
our relations with the Far East more difficult. 

The Chinese law of citizenship adopted in 1912 is very 
similar to our own. It is indeed based upon the doctrine 
prevalent in the West, and is an entirely new departure 
for China. It provides for the naturalization of for- 
eigners and defines the conditions under which a Chinese 
citizen may expatriate himself. Just as the American 
law claims the foreign-born children of American parents 
as American citizens, so the Chinese law claims as Chi- 
nese citizens the foreign-born children of Chinese par- 



432 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ents the Chinese law will permit such a child to choose 
American citizenship, but he must first free himself from 
any obligations to serve in the army or navy of China. 
This provision is copied from the laws of Japan, France, 
and various other countries. It should be noted, how- 
ever, that China has not yet established universal mili- 
tary service, and has thus far avoided any attempt to 
compel American-born Chinese to serve in the Chinese 
Army or Navy. 

The Chinese law permits Americans to he naturalized 
in China. But our courts have decided that no for- 
eigners other than whites and blacks are eligible to citi- 
zenship by naturalization in the United States. This 
provision of our laws is the source of much ill feeling in 
China and Japan toward the United States. It has re- 
sulted, too, in the formation within the body of the 
American people of a considerable element which cannot 
be assimilated and which must ever remain subject to a 
foreign power and owing allegiance abroad. Formerly 
the Chinese Government took little or no interest in its 
subjects living abroad, but this attitude has changed 
since the establishment of the republic. The Manchu 
code maintained strict provisions regarding the move- 
ments of the members of the Manchu, Mongol, and Chi- 
nese banner corps, because these were all bound to ren- 
der military service. They could not change their resi- 
dence, much less go abroad without special permission, 
but the ordinary Chinese subjects traveled far and wide 
without question. For two or three hundred years the 
Government made no effort to protect them, but after the 
Burlingame mission went abroad, ministers and consuls 
were appointed. 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 433 

Now, since China has become a republic, and the Chi- 
nese people instead of the Manchus control the Govern- 
ment, the interest in the Chinese resident abroad is so 
great that they are permitted to send representatives to 
sit in the parliament in Peking. This treatment nat- 
urally increases the loyalty of the Chinese in the United 
States to the Republic of China, and since they are not 
permitted, unless born here, to become American citizens, 
this feeling is quite justified. 

The strength of the family tie in China also tends to 
bind the wandering members of the race back to their 
ancestral community. In China the family, not the per- 
son, is the social unit. The father is an autocrat ; under 
the old regime he had power of life and death over his 
family. Ancestor worship strengthened the reverence of 
the young for their seniors, and bound related families 
closely together in the membership of the clan. The clan 
exercises authority over its members through the clan 
council, in which each head of a family has a voice. The 
clan thus brings to trial any member disloyal to its in- 
terests, and settles questions of property and other dis- 
putes among its members. It has even been known to 
disinherit members who fall under its condemnation and 
even to put them to death. 

The clan loyalty, however, has never been a source of 
international trouble. The Chinese in America have 
never intrigued against the American Government. 
Wherever they have gone, as a rule they have been law- 
abiding and loyal to the Government whose protection 
they have enjoyed. One thing that has aided in this has 
been the fact that most of the Chinese in the United 
States have come from southern China, where the former 



434 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

rulers of China were cordially disliked. The only po- 
litical offenses of which they have been ^ilty have been 
connected with plots for the overthrow of the Manchu 
monarchy, and now that this has been accomplished and 
a republic established, their sympathy with American in- 
stitutions is pronounced. This does not mean that the 
Chinese in the United States approve of American policy 
in the exclusion of their fellow-countrymen nor of the 
decision of our courts denying Chinese the right of 
naturalization. 

We must not forget that the Chinese came here at the 
request of Americans and at a time when their labor was 
greatly needed and highly appreciated. 

Neither should we forget that the early Chinese who 
desired naturalization were granted it. At that time 
nobody thought of any other course as desirable or pos- 
sible. It was only after Chinese immigration had in- 
creased so greatly as to create race feeling and threaten 
economic difficulties that the courts decided that the 
American Constitution applied only to whites and blacks, 
and could not be appealed to in behalf of men of the yel- 
low race. 

The method adopted by our Government to exclude 
Chinese immigration is, however, open to criticism. Af- 
ter inducing the Chinese Government to agree to the re- 
striction of Chinese immigration upon condition that it 
should never be absolutely prohibited, it does seem un- 
worthy of us that we did absolutely prohibit such immi- 
gration arbitrarily before we had denounced or amended 
the treaty. This act, however, was subsequently regu- 
larized by the treaty of 1896. Moreover, we might to- 
day be in a better position as regards undesirable im- 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 435 

migration had we enacted a law less specific. Thus we 
might have avoided offense to Chinese feelings given by 
mentioning them by name. And we might have based 
the legislation upon some general principle by which it 
could be seen that we were aiming at the protection of our 
own people and standards. 

A law properly drawn at that time would have made 
impossible the conditions which to-day give much oc- 
casion for alarms. But the past cannot be undone, and 
we are no longer disturbed by Chinese immigration; it 
has been effectually stopped. 

In so far as the American-born Chinese are concerned, 
we have no cause for complaint. They are as thoroughly 
Americanized as the American-horn children of any for- 
eigners that have come to our shores. They speak purer 
English than most children of immigrants; they accept 
enthusiastically American social and political ideals; 
they take high rank in our educational institutions ; they 
take instinctively to American sports, and they are thor- 
oughly loyal to the flag and among the foremost to enlist 
in its defense. Their right to citizenship can not be de- 
nied ; the courts have passed upon that question repeat- 
edly, and have uniformly decided in favor of the 
American citizenship of such Chinese. The greatest 
number of Chinese at any one time in the United States 
was 107,488. The restrictions upon Chinese immigra- 
tion have reduced that number to 71,531. This is the 
number in the recent census. Of these one third, per- 
haps, are American born, and are therefore American 
citizens. There ought not to be any difficulty in the 
assimilation of such a small group. 

As for the Japanese, there is no reason whether on 



436 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

racial or economic grounds why they should not receive 
exactly the same treatment as the Chinese. True, they 
are not racially identical with the Chinese, but they are 
not white and they are not black, and therefore they are 
not eligible to naturalization under the decisions of our 
courts. Economically they fall within the same cate- 
gory as the Chinese. Their standard of living is about 
the same as that of the Chinese. If there is any differ- 
ence in the wage scale, it is so slight that when compari- 
son is made with that of the white laborer it is not worth 
considering. Yet Japanese laws exclude the Chinese la- 
borer from Japan. That being so, we certainly ought to 
be permitted to exclude Japanese laborers from our coun- 
try without meriting serious criticism from Japan. The 
Japanese Government understands this perfectly, and 
therefore has undertaken voluntarily to refuse passports 
to laborers seeking to come to the United States. But 
they do not class farmers and gardeners as laborers, and 
we are therefore receiving a great many immigrants of 
this sort who are cultivating much of the agricultural 
land of this State. 

The Japanese law of citizenship is substantially like 
our own. A child is Japanese if its father at the time of 
conception was a Japanese subject. This is held no mat- 
ter where the child may be born. As for expatriation, 
the law of Japan is that ''if a child who is a Japanese 
subject acquires by acknowledgment a foreign nation- 
ality, he loses his Japanese nationality.'^ Until the re- 
cent revision of this law, the next paragraph qualified 
the statement by adding: ''notwithstanding the provi- 
sions of the preceding five articles, a male person of the 
age of seventeen years or upwards loses his Japanese 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 437 

nationality only if he has already performed his service 
in the army or navy or is not bound to perform such 
service." Military service in Japan is universal, but a 
child who is the only son of a parent over sixty years of 
age who is dependent upon such son for support is ex- 
empt from the requirement to serve in the army or navy. 
The recent revision of the law provides that, if the par- 
ents or guardians of a Japanese child living abroad shall 
before the child reaches the age of fifteen years declare 
that such child is to be a citizen of the state in which he 
was born, that child, upon application made, may be ex- 
empted from the obligation to perform military service. 
This is a great improvement over the law as it has ex- 
isted and been enforced until recently. Still, it leaves 
every child born in the United States of Japanese parents 
involved in the obligations of a dual citizenship until the 
election is made and exemption granted. And if the 
choice of American citizenship is not made before the 
age of fifteen years is reached, the boy on reaching the 
age of seventeen is liable to service in the Japanese army 
or navy and is expected to begin such service at the age 
of twenty years. There are said to be five thousand 
American-born Japanese now in Japan, presumably be- 
ing educated and performing their military duty. Very 
few applications for exemptions from the obligations to 
give military service appear to have been made on the 
ground that the applicant was to become an American 
citizen. 

Every male subject of Japan is liable to military serv- 
ice from seventeen to thirty-seven years of age. If a boy 
enters the infantry, he is bound to serve in the active 
army for two years ; in any other branch of the service for 



438 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

three years. He is then placed in the reserve for four 
years and four months, and following that period is en- 
rolled in the depot service, or second reserve, for ten 
years, and subsequently in the home defence for two 
years and eight months. A Japanese living abroad may 
obtain temporary exemption from service, but this must 
be renewed from year to year, and does not confer the 
privilege of expatriation. Thus it will be seen that it is 
the militaristic policy of the nation, the demand for men 
to fill the army and navy, that makes the conflicting 
claims as to citizenship a mutter of so much importance 
to Japan, just as it is to France, Switzerland, and various 
European countries. American-born Japanese, then, 
whose parents or guardians have not asked exemption for 
them from military service on the ground of their 
American citizenship remain all their lives, if they pre- 
serve their domicile in the United States, possessed of a 
dual nationalty. The American Government may call 
upon them for service in the American army, and Japan 
may summon them to the Japanese colors, so long as they 
are imder thirty-seven years of age. 

This question of a dual allegiance becomes of consid- 
erable importance when viewed in connection with the 
provisions of the land laws of California. These laws 
forbid the ownership of land to aliens who are not eligible 
to naturalization. Yet here are children owning land as 
American citizens by birth who may nevertheless be by 
the claim of Japan and by their own choice Japanese sub- 
jects. The Japanese Government, moreover, through the 
Japanese Association, apparently organized for this pur- 
pose, is doing all that it can to retain the allegiance of 
these children by so educating them in Japanese schools 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 439 

as to cause them to prefer Japanese nationality. Here 
is a grave error of policy to which too little attention has 
been paid. It does not seem consistent for the Japanese 
Government to insist upon the right of Japanese to hold 
land in the name of an American-born child and at the 
same time to attempt to retain the allegiance of that child 
as a Japanese subject. 

We must reach a clear understanding in regard to 
these questions. The American Government ought to re- 
quire such children of alien parentage to make choice at 
a proper age of the nationality which they mean to bear, 
and the two governments might enter into a convention 
to determine the conditions under which the choice shall 
be made and agree together to respect the choice. The 
State of California might very well, too, so modify the 
present law as to forbid the holding of agricultural land 
in the names of children of aliens ineligible to citizenship 
until choice of American citizenship for such children 
shall have been made and assent to that choice given by 
the Government of Japan. Even such a modification of 
the law would not be entirely satisfactory so long as the 
present method of educating Japanese children in the 
United States continues. Furthermore, we must not for- 
get that even after the American citizenship of a Japa- 
nese child is acknowledged, he becomes a Japanese sub- 
ject at once without formality upon his acquiring a domi- 
cile in Japan. That is the Japanese law. 

The strength of the family tie greatly aids the Japanese 
Government in its efforts to hold the allegiance of for- 
eign-born Japanese children. Prior to the revolution of 
1868, by which the mikado was nominally restored to di- 
rect control of the empire, the civilization of Japan was 



440 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

almost wholly derived from China. The solidarity of the 
family, therefore, was almost as marked in Japan as in 
China. The stren^h of the family tie is still striking. 

Individualistic teachings appear to have found less 
ready acceptance in Japan than in China. But the au- 
thority of the family has never taken precedence of that 
of the state, as is often the case in China, where the clans 
sometimes oppose and triumph over the local representa- 
tives of the Central Government. The loyalty of the 
Japanese to his Government stands above all else. That 
is his religion. 

This is due in part perhaps to the spirit of feudalism, 
which survived in Japan until 1871. In China it was 
overthrown 221 b. c. The samurai of Japan were profes- 
sional soldiers. In their courage and their loyalty to 
their feudal lords they resembled the knights of the Mid- 
dle Ages in Europe. When the daimyos, or feudal lords, 
voluntarily surrendered their lands and powers into the 
hands of the emperor, the samurai became subject to but 
one authority, that of the emperor, whom they had al- 
ways worshiped. The loyalty to the emperor is just as 
marked as that which formerly they gave to their daim- 
yos. The Japanese, moreover, are a small, compact na- 
tion of one language and possessing common ideals. The 
masses of the people prior to the restoration were serfs 
and slaves. Since the restoration they still show to- 
ward their rulers the same submissiveness as before. All 
this tends to preserve the solidarity of the Japanese not 
only at home, but even when they go abroad. There are 
exceptions, of course. Democratic ideas are making slow 
progress even in Japan, but for the most part the Japa- 
nese are not only loyal to the Imperial Government, 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 441 

which is to be expected, but they respond promptly to the 
guidance of the official representatives of their Govern- 
ment in matters where they are free to act for themselves, 
and show equal readiness to submit to the authority of 
parents and family councils, which, touching matters 
which the Government interests itself in, is likely to rein- 
force the official policy. We ought not then to expect 
American-born Japanese who grow up in a Japanese 
environment, and who have their lives shaped by official 
and parental influences, to be anything else than Japa- 
nese in feeling and conduct. 

The natural tendency to cling to the nationality of 
their ancestors is reinforced, moreover, by the attitude of 
their American neighbors, so often hostile to them. 
When the parents are denied American citizenship, the 
children cannot be expected to be enthusiastically 
American. When the Imperial Japanese Government 
claims them as Japanese subjects despite their birth in 
the United States, they are apt to accept that status and 
give a ready allegiance to the Japanese Government. 

The Japanese Government follows its emigrating sub- 
jects with paternal care and jealously guards their in- 
terests. This is natural and within certain limits it is 
right; but it ought not to go any further than insistence 
upon the fulfilment of treaty obligations. Unfortu- 
nately, the emigration program of the Japanese Govern- 
ment in some countries has been closely associated with 
its program for economic and political control of those 
countries, and this has caused dislike of the immigrants 
in those countries and created suspicion elsewhere. In 
Korea, IManchuria, and Siberia we have seen the effects 
of this unhappy combination. Military occupation is 



442 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

used to further commercial exploitation. Advantages 
thus gained are secured by discriminatory legislation, 
and the immigrant becomes an excuse for gradual en- 
croachment upon the sovereignty of the ruling power. 
Somewhat similar methods are being employed in Shan- 
tung. It is quite true that none of these things have 
been done in American territory, but the spirit w^liich 
prompts the use of such methods in one place creates 
distrust elsewhere, and the knowledge that such an ag- 
gressive spirit and policy exists ser\'es to aggravate the 
growing feeling that it is undesirable to have located on 
the Pacific coast of the United States a colony of aliens, 
most of whom are denied the privilege of becoming citi- 
zens and all of whom are ardently loyal to a foreign 
power, ruled by an ambitious oligarchy, inspired with the 
spirit of aggression which has already manifested itself 
in the Far East. 

In vain do the paid propagandists of Japan deny the 
existence of a militaristic spirit in that empire. Their 
own liberal-minded countrymen affirm it. A few days 
ago in the Imperial Diet at Tokio the following statement 
was made by Mr. Ozald, formerly mayor of Tokio, and 
later minister of justice in the Okuma cabinet : 

"It is only by the overthrow of militarism that the 
good repute of Japan can be restored in the world to its 
former lustre." Again he asserted: **The introduction 
of a budget of which one third is devoted to a bloated in- 
crease of armaments is the height of absurdity." Fur- 
thermore he said: "Japan will never win her rightful 
place among the nations until she throws off the tyranny 
of the military clique. World suspicion has turned 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 443 

against us because the world sees in Japan an aggressive 
and militaristic country." 

The ''Osaka Asahi," one of the most influential jour- 
nals in Japan, recently published a leader which was 
translated and published in the ''Japan Advertiser" of 
June 6th last. (Mr. J. 0. P. Bland had made certain 
statements regarding Japan to which the article refers.) 
*' Bland is right in saying that the reason why Japan can 
not obtain a perfect understanding with foreign coun- 
tries is that decision on diplomatic policy rests not with 
a responsible government hut with certain irresponsible 
influences, i. e., the militarists. . . . We agree that unless 
the irresponsible forces are superseded by a responsible 
government no satisfactory renewal of the alliance 
(Anglo-Japanese) can be hoped for." The "Asahi" 
continues: "There are two or three foreign offices in 
Tokio," that is, these matters are not left as they should 
be to the ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The Diplomatic 
Advisory Council of Terauchi," he asserts, "still con- 
tinues to function, notwithstanding that Hara, a sup- 
posed liberal, is Premier." By which Mr. Bland means 
that the militarists are still in control. 

In January last the "Yomiura" published an article 
saying that the militarists in Japan were disturbing and 
disjointing the Government's policy in China. About 
the same time the Tokio "Asahi," discussing the denial 
of General Tanaka that the military were interfering 
with diplomatic affairs, said: "What of our diplomacy 
with China? Has it never happened that while the For- 
eign Office was making arrangements in accordance with 
a definite policy, the Japanese military officers in China 



444. MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

were taking a different course and showing much ac- 
tivity behind the scenes?'^ This paper also charged that 
such interference had been going on in the United States 
and in European capitals, the military and naval at- 
taches working at cross purposes with the embassies. 

Such evidence can be greatly multiplied, but it is not 
necessary to present more. All students of Far-Eastern 
affairs know that the Government of Japan is an oli- 
garchy. Ever since the restoration of the mikado a small 
group of statesmen have been in control. The Toku- 
gawa Clan lost its power when the Shogunate was over- 
thrown, but the so-called restoration was more properly 
speaking the substitution of the rule of four clans for 
that of one. And these four clans have been controlled 
by two, Choshu and Satsuma. Choshu since that time 
has had control of the army, and Satsuma of the navy. 
And when the constitution was pwmulgated in 1889 it 
was found to contain a clause which makes it obligatory 
that an officer of the army shall he minister of war, and 
an officer of the navy minister of marine. 

In this way it has remained possible through more than 
thirty years for the two clans, Choshu and Satsuma, to 
prevent the formation of a cabinet of which they did not 
approve. And they still wield that power, no matter 
what the name of the party may be to which the premier 
may belong. Militarists thus shape the policies of the 
Government. 

The aggressive policy of these militarists is not recent. 
It is as old as the restoration, conceived and advocated 
at that time by the leaders of the restoration. It was 
that remarkable man, Yoshida Shoin, the teacher of Ito, 
Kido, Inouye, Shinagawa, and others who rose to great 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 445 

prominence in after years — it was this man who gave ut- 
terance in 1854 to the program of foreign conquest which 
has been steadily followed by Japan ever since. Mr. 
Tokutomi, the editor of the ''Kobumin Shimbun," who 
wrote the life of Hoshida, says that he was not the first 
to propose such a program, but he was undoubtedly the 
man who gave it currency and who implanted the ambi- 
tion to realize it in the hearts of the young men who af- 
terward shaped the destinies of Japan. While he was in 
prison for a political offense he wrote his book, ''Ryu- 
kon Roku, ' ' in which he said : 

"Our great obligation to-day is to readjust the administration 
of the country and by diplomacy to develop friendly relations 
with some of the most important foreign countries; therefore 
we must know the conditions existing in foreign countries. 
According to the tendency of the times I believe there should be 
in the future an alliance between the five great continents and 
in this way avoid great conflicts. The chief of this gTeat con- 
federation will naturally be England or Russia, but I beUeve 
it should be Russia, as England is too avaricious. Russia is 
strong and strict and therefore Russia will probably make the 
best reputation. Japan, in order to maintain her independence, 
must have Korea and part of Manchuria and also should have 
territories in South America and India. This will be very dif- 
ficult, however, as we are not strong enough and for this reason 
we should make an alliance with Russia, because she is our 
neighbor. If Ave depend upon Russia she will feel friendly 
toward us. Until this is accomplished it would be well to seek 
the sympathy of America and get her help in resisting the 
aggression of England. In carrying out this imperial policy 
we must look upon America as our eastern ally and Russia as 
our brother and Europe as our territory. And the first im- 
portant thing is to take some territory in the nearest countries." 



446 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

It is significant that his pupil Ito also preferred a Rus- 
sian to a British alliance. Yoshida also advocated the 
annexation of the Loochoos and the Kurile Islands and 
the taking of Kamchatka. Mr. Tokutomi calls attention 
to the fact that in a little more than sixty years this 
program had been nearly completed. 

It was the policy of the restoration leaders to put an 
end to internecine strife, to the civil war so continuously 
waged between the clans, by giving the warlike samurai 
plenty of occupation in wars of foreign conquest. An at- 
tempt was made to begin the program while Ito was 
abroad with his commission trying to get a revision of 
the treaties which had unjustly bound Japan to a low 
tariff on foreign imports. He failed in this, but he still 
had enough influence to stop a movement which at that 
time (1873) would have been foolish in the extreme. 
He pointed out that Japan had no modern army or mod- 
ern equipment and would be unable to meet Western foes 
if they should take a hand in the game. He advocated a 
period of preparation. He drew up a constitution 
modeled upon that of Prussia, which gives the form, but 
not the substance, of legislative power to the representa- 
tives of the people. He replaced French officers with 
German for the instruction of the army, and had that 
force built up and drilled on the German plan. Then in 
1894, when the liberals of Japan began to clamor for a 
really representative government, he silenced all opposi- 
tion to the rule of the oligarchy by picking a quarrel with 
China and phmging the country into a foreign war. 
From that time to this Japan has gone from strength to 
strength, and because of her victories has won a place 
among the five great powers of the world. 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 447 

Drunk with success, these militarists are now planning 
for the hegemony of Asia. This ambition has given birth 
to the Pan- Asian movement, whose watchword is '^Asia 
for the Asiatics, with Japan in the lead." The former 
secretary of the Japanese legation at Peking, who tried 
to convince the Chinese officials there that the Twenty- 
one Demands of 1915 were really made in the interest of 
the Chinese, explained that they were a part of the Pan- 
Asian movement, the first step in a great plan to unite 
Japanese and Chinese interests with ''a view to the ulti- 
mate amalgamation of all Asiatic interests, so that from 
Japan to Egypt there should be built up a great Asiatic 
confederation for the purpose of ousting the white man." 
The movement is well-known and finds much favor in 
Japan and also in China to some extent. The ''Japan 
Magazine, ' ' shortly after the making of the proposal just 
quoted, published an article showing that the white man 
is unsuited to life in the tropics. It closed with this 
statement : * ' The Japanese is a yellow man ; he has the 
warm blood of the South ; his temperature is normally be- 
low that of the European, and the cry of Southward Ho ! 
is most natural to him. Japan not Europe or America is 
to be supreme in Asia." The Japanese secretary men- 
tioned though that the Asiatic confederation might be 
brought about in seven years; that is, by 1922. He 
pointed to a map and said that Australia also was a ter- 
ritory that ''Asiatics should dominate." 

The Japanese Government does not of course openly 
avow any such ambition, but several prominent states- 
men and publicists have indorsed such a program. A 
writer in the "Chuo Koron" advocated war to expand 
the empire and relieve the pressure of population. "It 



448 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

is all very well," he said, ''for countries like England 
and America to talk about peace, but what Japan most 
needs is to break the bonds that restrict her expansion 
and make the Pacific the centre of her activities and es- 
tablish her own colonies as vents for emigration." The 
''Yomiuri" refused to blame German ambitions, saying, 
*'A nation should always look to its own interests and, if 
possible, should ever cultivate a determination to con- 
quer the world." Here we see the German influence, 
''the will to victory." 

A former minister of agriculture and commerce, Mr. 
Nakashoji, is quoted by the "Japan Chronicle" as urg- 
ing Japan to develop her army and navy until her ' ' heav- 
enly gift of militarism" should render her more formid- 
able than ever. Mr. Arai Teijiro surpassed him by say- 
ing that Japan should become the ruler of all the powers 
of the world, promoting the welfare and freedom of all 
nations of the globe. Mr. Takekoshi, formerly a member 
of Parliament and author of "Japanese Rule in For- 
mosa," in 1916 published an article advocating the seiz- 
ure of the Dutch East Indies by Japan. He said: "It 
is easy to be peaceful when you have all you want, but 
it was not by peaceful methods that the British Empire 
became so vastly extended. If the Japanese wish to be- 
come as powerful as western nations they will have to 
adopt the same policy of expansion as western nations 
followed until they obtained enough and began to talk of 
peace." The same project of the conquest of the Dutch 
Indies was urged also by a retired captain of the Jap- 
anese Nav^^, Hosaka Hikotare. Professor Niita of the 
Imperial University in 1916 expressed sympathj^ with the 
revolutionary party in India, saying: "The independ- 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 449 

ence of India cannot be expected in a short time. After 
Japan's power has increased a great deal she may think 
of extending her protecting hand to India." 

Just a year ago, in the summer of 1919^ Count Okuma 's 
organ, the *'Hochi," of Tokio, said: 

"That age in which the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was the 
pivot and American-Japanese cooperation an essential factor of 
Japanese diplomacy, is gone. In future we must look not east- 
ward for friendship, but westward. Let the Bolsheviki of Rus- 
sia be put down and the more peaceful party estabHshed in 
power. In them Japan will find a strong ally. By marching 
westward to the Balkans, to Germany, to France and Italy the 
greater part of the world may be brought under our sway. 
The tyranny of the Anglo-Saxons at the Peace Conference is 
such that it has angered both gods and men. Some may ab- 
jectly follow them in consideration of their petty interests but 
things will ultimately settle down as has just been indicated." 

Some time ago Okuma himself made the following 
statement : 

"Being oppressed by the Europeans, the 300 millions of 
India are looking for Japanese protection. They have com- 
menced to boycott European merchandise. If, therefore, the 
Japanese let the chance slip by and do not go to India, the 
Indians will be disappointed. From old times India has been 
a land of treasure. Alexander the Great obtained there treas- 
ure sufficient to load a hundred camels and Mahmoud and 
Attila also obtained riches from India. Why should not the 
Japanese stretch out their hands to that eountrj^, now that the 
people are looking to the Japanese? The Japanese ought to 
go to India, to the South Seas and other parts of the world." 

Such quotations might easily be multiplied; I cite 
these to show that this aggressive policy is not the wild 



450 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

raving of irresponsible people, but is urged by people of 
standing and influence. 

Let us admit at once that the white man's conduct in 
Asia has given abundant grounds for criticism ; that his 
conquest and annexation of territories rightfully belong- 
ing to the yellow race has furnished plenty of precedents 
for such a program as is entertained by Japan. All that 
I am concerned with now is the evidence of a militarist 
spirit in Japan. Perhaps the ambition to be the deliverer 
of Asia from white domination is natural and justifiable. 
Perhaps the solution of the color question may some day 
be found in such a program. Only let us not deceive 
ourselves as to the conditions. 

I should be unjust, however, if I should neglect to say 
that this aggressive program is not approved by all Japa- 
nese. There are jingoes in all lands, and Japan unfor- 
tunately finds them in her Government and in other in- 
fluential circles. But there are liberal-minded people in 
Japan who are opposed to this warlike policy. They 
have been trying for years to get rid of the oligarchy that 
has imbibed the Prussian spirit and adopted Prussian 
methods. They have indeed succeeded in enlarging the 
electorate to some extent, but they have just failed in 
their attempt to obtain universal suffrage. The number 
of the voters in Japan is still not more than two millions. 
Mr. Ozaki, whom I have already quoted, said in an ad- 
dress delivered last January, ''The political and social 
structure of Japan at present may be likened to putting 
the peerless Fuji upside down." That is perhaps an 
adaptation of Andrew Carnegie's simile, in which he 
represented a monarchy as a pyramid on its apex and a 
republic as a pyramid on its base. In the address to 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 451 

which I refer Mr. Ozaki advocated a thorough social and 
political reconstruction. ''To accomplish this," he said, 
''nothing can be more urgent and important than the 
adoption of universal suffrage so that the monopoly of 
political power by certain classes of people may be pre- 
vented." But universal suffrage will be insufficient 
without amendment of the Constitution, and this can be 
done only upon the initiative of the emperor. 

Our sympathies are of course with these liberals who 
are working under a great handicap. We hope that they 
may soon accomplish the reform at which they are aim- 
ing. Meantime we have to do with things as they exist. 
We have to do with a government which is aggressively 
militaristic and which through all changes of cabinet 
never loses sight of its goal and never misses an oppor- 
tunity to increase the prestige of the empire. It is this 
spirit that prompts it to retain a hold upon its emigrants 
wherever they may go, to organize them and use them 
to further its aims. 

Such emigrants from Japan when they become immi- 
grants into the United States are kept under the close 
supervision of the Japanese consular authorities. More- 
over, by direction of the Japanese Foreign Office they are 
organized into societies. I am told by Japanese in the 
United States that wherever one hundred or more Japa- 
nese are found in one community they are required to 
organize a local society, and this society virtually governs 
the Japanese community. The society is empowered hy 
the Japanese Government to levy a tax upon its members. 
From twenty-five cents to $1.50 a month is paid by each 
family or single adult male. With this money a Japa- 
nese propaganda is maintained throughout the State and 



452 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

nation. The society in California raises from $40,000 to 
$70,000 a year for this purpose. There are paid propa- 
gandists who are Japanese, and there are others who are 
Americans. A part of the money, too, is used to pay the 
salaries or part of the salaries of certain professors and 
instructors in some American colleges and universities 
where Japanese history is taught and interest created in 
Far-Eastern affairs. 

In addition to this important piece of work the so- 
cieties also organize school boards which have charge of 
the education of Japanese children. The children in 
Japanese families, even though they are born in the 
United States and are recognized by us as American 
citizens, are required to attend those Japanese schools. 
After the American school hours are over the little Jap- 
anese child must go to his Japanese teacher, where he is 
taught the Japanese language. If that were all, it would 
not be so very objectionable, but it is not all. The Japa- 
nese schools are a nursery of loyalty to Japan. The 
Japanese Emperor^s portrait is usually placed in each 
school in Japa^i, and the pupils do it reverence, for the 
divinity of the emperor is a part of the Japanese creed. 
The imperial edict of the late Meiji emperor is taught 
in all the schools as the foundation of morals. 

This edict, which must be learned by heart, is as fol- 
lows: 

"Know ye Our subjects: Our Imperial Ancestors have 
founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting and have 
deeply and firmly implanted virtue. Our subjects ever united 
in loyalty and filial piety have from generation to generation 
illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of tlie funda- 
mental character of Our Empire and herein also lies the source 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 453 

of Our education. Ye, Our subjects, be filial to your parents, 
affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives 
be harmonious; as friends be true; bear yourselves in modesty 
and moderation ; extend your benevolence to all ; pursue learn- 
ing and cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual facul- 
ties and perfect moral powers; furthermore advance public 
good and j^romote common interests; Always respect the Con- 
stitution and observe the laws; should emergency arise, offer 
yourselves courageously to the State and thus guard and main- 
tain the propriety of Our Imperial Throne, coeval with Heaven 
and Earth. So shall ye be not only Our good and faithful sub- 
jects, but render illustrious the best traditions of your fore- 
fathers. The way here set forth is indeed the teaching be- 
queathed by Our Imperial Ancestors to be observed alike by 
Their Descendants and the subjects, infallible for all ages and 
true in all places. It is Our wish to lay it to heart in all rev- 
erence, in common with you, Our subjects, that we may all thus 
attain to the same virtue. 

'Tmperiai. Sig Manual." 

"Privy Seal." 
"10th Moon, 30th day, Meiji, 1890." 

I have not been able to learn how far these practices 
are followed in Japanese schools in the United States. 

Of course the society is unable to collect the taxes im- 
posed if any are unwilling to pay, but few will face 
the scorn of their countrymen that will be theirs if they 
refuse to pay. Moreover, if any refuse, it becomes pos- 
sible sooner or later to punish them. Should such a man 
require a passport or other service from the consul, he 
is referred to the society, which will report whether or 
not he is in arrears in the payment of dues. If in ar- 
rears, he must pay up in full before he can secure the 
services of the consulate. 



454 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

In the establishment of Buddhist temples in the United 
States the Japanese citizen is of course within his rights. 
There are, it is said, seventy-eight such temples in Cali- 
fornia. But when we take into consideration the sur- 
roundings of the Japanese child, the atmosphere of the 
home where loyalty to a foreign emperor is a religious 
duty, where the authority of the father is submissively 
acknowledged, when we remember the powers of the 
Japanese society and the compelling force of Japanese 
opinion, the teaching of the Japanese school, and the bu- 
reaucratic supervision of the Japanese consulate, the ad- 
dition of the Japanese temple and its services must be 
allowed to augment the strength of the ties that bind 
that child to Japan and tend to make his profession of 
allegiance to the United States merely a convenient form 
which must be observed for the sake of privileges other- 
wise unobtainable. 

The Japanese Government not only retains a hold upon 
its subjects in the United States, but is ever watchful to 
obstruct any legislation that seems to threaten their 
rights as residents in the United States. 

It was not until the Chinese exclusion law was passed 
by Congress that there began to be any considerable 
number of Japanese immigrants into the United States; 
in 1880 there were only 148 here; in 1890 there were 
2,039 ; in 1909 there were in round numbers 100,000 ; to- 
day the official estimate of the Japanese population of 
this State alone is 87,000, and there are no doubt many ' 
more. When this rapid increase began to attract atten- " 
tion, as it did after 1909, the commercial treaty between 
our country and Japan came up for revision in 1911. 
The Japanese are a proud people and could not submit to 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 455 

any mention in the treaty of a restriction upon immigra- 
tion. The first article of the treaty therefore provides 
reciprocally that 

"The citizens and subjects of each of the High Contracting 
Parties shall have liberty to enter, travel and reside in the 
territories of the other to carry on trade, wholesale and retail, 
to own or lease and occupy houses, manufactories, warehouses 
and shops, to employ agents of their choice, to lease land for 
residential and commercial purposes, and generally to do any- 
thing incident to or necessary for trade upon the same terms 
as native citizens or subjects, submitting themselves to the laws 
and regulations there established." 

This provision gives the Japanese in this country and 
Americans in Japan the right to reside in such places 
for the purpose of trade. There is no comma after the 
phrase ''reside in the territories of the other," so that 
the following words, ''to carry on trade," define the ob- 
ject of their residence there. This undoubtedly was 
intentional. Americans, of course, are not likely to want 
to carry on agriculture in Japan, but if they should so 
desire they cannot claim the right under this treaty. 
The Japanese do carry on agriculture in the United 
States, and the treaty does not forbid it, but there can be 
no claim of a right to do so under the provisions of the 
treaty. The article also gives the right to own houses, 
but does not give the right to own land. It gives the 
right to lease land for residential purposes and for 
commercial purposes, but not agricultural purposes. 
An American cannot own land in Japan under the pro- 
visions of the treaty ; that is to say, no affirmative right 
is given, but in this case the silence of the treaty is sup- 
plemented by Japanese law which forbids the ownership 



456 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

of land by aliens. It is true that the Japanese Diet 
some years ago passed a new law granting ownership to 
aliens, but it was never put into force. It must not be 
forgotten that the Diet has no right to legislate over 
the veto of the Government, and, even when the Govern- 
ment has approved, the law does not become operative 
until an imperial edict to that effect is issued. 

This first article of the treaty was very carefully 
drawn, and what is omitted is just as intentionally omit- 
ted as the inclusions are intentionally^ included. Under 
the treaty, therefore, Japanese have no affirmative right 
to own land in the United States and no right to lease 
land except for residential and commercial purposes. 
The same is true of Americans in Japan. The provision 
is strictly reciprocal. 

Another important provision of the treaty is that of 
Article VII, which reads : 

"Limited-liability and other companies and associations, com- 
mercial, industrial and financial, already or hereafter to be 
organized in accordance with the laws of either High Contract- 
ing Party and domiciled in the territories of the other, to exer- 
cise their rights and appear in the courts either as plaintiffs 
or defendants, subject to the laws of the country. - The fore- 
going stipulation has no bearing upon the question whether a 
company or association organized in one of the two countries, 
will or will not be permitted to transact business or industry in 
the other, this permission remaining always subject to the laws 
and regulations enacted or established in the respective country 
or in any part thereof." 

This expressly resen^es to each country the right to 
say upon what terms or under what conditions, if any, 
a foreign corporation may do business in that country. 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 457 

It grants nothing more than the right to appear in court 
to prosecute or to defend. 

After this treaty had been signed, the Japanese Am- 
bassador, Baron, now Viscount, Uchida, made this decla- 
ration : 

"In proceeding this day to the signature of the Treaty of 
Commerce and Navigation between Japan and the United 
States, the undersigned, Japanese Ambassador in Washing- 
ton, duly authorized by his Government has the honor to declare 
that the Imperial Japanese Government are fully prepared to 
maintain with equal effectiveness the limitation and control 
whieli they have for the past three years exercised in regulation 
of the emigration of laborers to the United States. 

"Y. Uchida." 
"February 21, 1911." 

This refers to the so-called ''Gentlemen's Agreement,'* 
entered into in 1908 by Secretary Root and Ambassador 
Takahira, in accordance with which the Japanese Gov- 
ernment would itself withhold passports from all labor- 
ers who might desire to go to the United States. In other 
words, the only restriction upon Japanese immigration is 
a voluntary one on the part of Japan, which of course 
can be terminated at any time by that Government. At 
first it was an oral agreement, but later was embodied in 
a memorandum, and then in 1911 supported by the writ- 
ten pledge which I have just given. 

The Japanese are naturally very sensitive in regard 
to this matter and have been unwilling that any refer- 
ence should be made in our legislation to this arrange- 
ment as in any way binding the Japanese Government. 
It must be accepted, as it is, a voluntary restriction of 
emigration of laborers from Japan. But the increase 



458 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

of Japanese holdings of land in California led, as we all 
know, to the legislation of 1913, forbidding to aliens not 
eligible to naturalization the ownership of land in Cali- 
fornia. The situation has grown more and more critical 
along the Pacific coast, and when a new bill restricting 
immigration was introduced into the national House of 
Representatives in 1916, a clause was inserted which 
made some indirect reference to the voluntary restriction 
by Japan of the emigration of laborers to the United 
States, which was intended to exempt from operation of 
the law any country that voluntarily refused passports to 
laborers, but only so long as the restriction was en- 
forced. At first the Japanese made no objection, but at 
the next session of Congress in 1917 they made decided 
objection to the phraseology. Various attempts to re- 
vise it were made, but finally it was abandoned, and a 
clause was substituted which excluded all laborers coming 
from within certain meridians of longitude and parallels 
of latitude. The clause is a very cumbersome one, and is 
designed to shut out undesirable immigration from India 
and neighboring countries, but drawn in such a way 
as to admit certain elements from northern Turkey and 
Persia. 

During the year 1917 several States in our Northwest 
had bills introduced to restrict the ownership of land, all 
modeled upon the legislation of California. As we were 
at war with Germany, the D'epartment of State felt that 
it would be most unwise to stir up an agitation of this 
question, and at its request the several legislatures aban- 
doned the matter. So also in 1919. But we are no 
longer conducting military operations in Europe, and 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 459 

the question of Oriental labor confronts us again. What 
ought to be the answer ? 

There can he but one principle to guide us in attempt- 
ing a sohition of the problem. That principle is justice. 
We must be just to Japan and to the Japanese people; 
we must in particular avoid anything like injustice to 
those Japanese who are now in the United States, most 
of whom are here lawfully. This is no time for an ap- 
peal to unreasoning prejudice. Race prejudice unfor- 
tunately exists, but our pride of race and our desire to 
keep the blood unmixed ought not to make us blind to 
the good qualities of other races or indifferent to their 
rights. 

On the other hand, we must be just to our own people, 
who have built up this great commonwealth and who de- 
sire to preserve it as a heritage for their children. The 
most highly cultivated plants must be carefully protected 
against competition with other plants. Otherwise they 
fail to hold their ground, and either degenerate or dis- 
appear. Our civilization is a delicate plant which can 
not enter into unprotected competition luith certain other 
hardy varieties. That competition must he reduced hy 
such restriction as will give the needed protection. 

Japan, too, must be just, just to her own people and 
just to us. It is unjust to her own people in the United 
States and to us to endeavor as she has done in past 
years to retain control over them ; to organize them into 
so-called societies which are really local governments, 
making here in our midst an imperium in imperio, and 
ruling them even while they are within the jurisdiction 
of the American Government. It is particularly unjust 



460 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

to the Japanese children born as American citizens that 
she should train them from infancy to make loyalty to 
Japan a part of their religion, and yet permit them for 
the sake of certain economic advantages here to become 
American citizens in name, assuring them, as present 
Japanese laws do, that immediately upon their return 
to Japan, if they establish a domicile there, they become 
at once without ceremony Japanese subjects. 

I do not forget the improvement made by recent modi- 
fication of the law of military service, exempting from 
its operation those children whose guardians will declare 
before the child reaches fifteen years of age that he is 
to become an American citizen and who will apply for 
such exemption. This, however, will not relieve from the 
conflicting claims of a dual citizenship those children 
whose parents or guardians neglect to make the required 
declaration before the child reaches the age of fifteen 
years. But it is a step in the right direction. Now let 
the Japanese Government take a second step; withdraw 
from the direction and control of the Japanese in Amer- 
ica and advise its subjects here to dissolve that organiza- 
tion. Let it furthermore give up its attempts to control 
the education of Japanese children in the United States. 
Lastly let it abandon its semi-official propaganda and 
leave the Japanese residents of the United States free to 
adopt American ideals and become Americanized. 

But such action upon the part of Japan would call for 
reciprocal action upon our part. It is had policy on the 
part of the American Government to admit large num- 
bers of any, race to become permanent residents of the 
country and yet deny them the privilege of being nat- 
uralized. By that denial we force them to segregate 



CONFLICTING NATIONAL POLICIES 461 

themselves and organize for self -protection. We compel 
them to retain their allegiance to a foreign state, and yet 
blame them for training their children to that same al- 
legiance. We ought either to limit such immigration 
very strictly or to grant the privilege of naturalization. 

And whatever we do should be done by a convention 
whose terms will be reciprocal, denying to Americans in 
Japan all that we deny to Japanese here. We must not 
forget that our present treaty with Japan — that of 1911 
— permits Japanese immigration. Until we relieve our- 
selves of our obligations under that treaty we cannot 
honorably enact restrictive legislation. The treaty is 
due for revision in 1923, but may be terminated at any 
time by giving six months* notice of such intention. 
But, if we should decide to terminate that treaty and ar- 
range for a restriction of Japanese immigration, we are 
still left with a very serious problem — ^that of dealing 
justly with the Japanese already lawfully in the coun- 
try. And of the same sort is the problem of dealing 
justly with the Chinese and other Asiatics who also are 
lawfully here. 

I suggest that, if we admit as immigrants hereafter 
only those Orientals who belong to the favored classes 
and entirely exclude all laborers and agriculturists, as 
is already done with the Chinese and certain other Asi- 
atics, we can well afford to grant American citizenship 
to those already here who are willing to he naturalized. 
The total number of Japanese now in the United States 
is very small when compared with the whole population ; 
the number of Chinese is still smaller, and, in fact, neg- 
ligible. Grant them all American citizenship and let 
their children grow up as Americans. Within two gen- 



462 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

erations thereafter, it is safe to say, they would be lost 
in the great body of the American people. 

There need be no difficulty in making the naturaliza- 
tion of Orientals entirely legal. The Constitution of 
the United States provides that Congress shall have 
power to "establish an uniform rule of naturalization." 
The first national Congress passed an act for naturaliza- 
tion of aliens who should be free white persons. After 
the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Con- 
stitution additional legislation was had to provide for 
the grant of citizenship to the negroes. 

There can be no doubt, therefore, as to the power of 
Congress to amend the law still further so that those 
aliens of the yellow race who are lawfully in the United 
States or who may hereafter come lawfully to have a 
domicile here, may be naturalized. 

If such legislation were had, the great majority of the 
Asiatics of foreign birth would ask for naturalization. 
Such action would be encouraged and hastened by an 
amendment of the California Alien Land Law so as to 
forbid the holding of land for agricultural purposes by 
minor children of Orientals who are not naturalized. 

If a provision for the naturalization of Orientals now 
in this country can not be inserted in the conventions 
that are to stipulate the exclusion hereafter of laborers 
and agriculturists, then California will be justified in 
barring the transfer of land to the minor children of 
Orientals who are not citizens. 



CHAPTER 28 
CHEAP LABOR AND STANDARDS OF LP^ING 



For the benefit of those who have not followed eco- 
nomics closely the following brief statement as to the 
connection between cheap labor and living standards will 
prove useful, especially in conjunction with the reading 
of Books III and IV. It has been prepared by Mr. War- 
ren S. Thompson. 



THE term ''cheap labor" here refers to any type of 
workmen who, because of their relatively low stand- 
ards of living, are able and willing to accept a lower 
wage or price for a given amount of labor or goods than 
workmen having higher standards of living. It is ob- 
vious that workmen who are accustomed to living on a 
very monotonous diet, who are contented to crowd to- 
gether in shanties and vile tenements, who put their chil- 
dren to work at the youngest possible age, who encourage 
their wives to go to work outside the home, and who ex- 
pect nothing in return from their labor but the creature 
necessities of life, can accept a lower wage than workmen 
who are accustomed to living in better surroundings, who 
want their wives to be able to remain at home and care 
for their children, and who want their children to get a 
fair education as a start in the struggle of life. 

It is but natural that we should find employers and 
463 



464 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

employees looking at the problem of cheap labor from 
entirely different points of view, and therefore arriving 
at opposite conclusions, regarding the necessity and de- 
sirability of doing all in our power to keep up the supply 
of such labor. The employer, as never before, is becom- 
ing involved in a competition for world markets with the 
employers of other lands, and often feels that, if he is to 
stay in the game, he must have a supply of cheap and 
docile labor. He believes that his competitors have an 
abundance of such labor, and in order to meet them on 
equal terms in the world's markets he, too, must have 
cheap labor. The laborer, on the other hand, looks at 
the problem as one of maintaining his standard of living 
in competition with workmen who are not accustomed to 
living as well as he, and feels that the best way to deal 
with the matter is to prevent competition. He would 
like to prevent the cheap laborers of foreign lands from 
coming here in such numbers as to endanger his position, 
and he would like to undertake the education of those 
now here so that they would demand conditions of em- 
ployment and wages equal to his own. 

From the point of view of the student interested in 
our national population movements, the problem of cheap 
labor is one of vital importance. It is a universal rule 
of population growth that people with low standards of 
living have a higher birth-rate th-an those with higher 
standards of living. A large number of births are not 
felt to be a burden among people with low standards of 
living. They expect quite a large percentage of their 
children to die in infancy, and they expect those who 
grow up to go to work at a very tender age, and thus 
partly or wholly support themselves. Whether people 



CHEAP LABOR 465 

with low standards of living increase in numbers depends 
upon their being able to secure food and shelter suf- 
ficient to raise more than enough children to replace the 
parents. Those who know China best believe that al- 
though its birth-rate is very high, its population is virtu- 
ally stationary, because of the difficulty of increasing the 
food supply. When, however, people with low stand- 
ards of living come into competition with people having 
higher standards of living, the former increase generally 
more rapidly than the latter because their death-rate is 
lowered by the greater ease of securing the scanty means 
of sustenance to which they have been accustomed. Con- 
sequently, people of low standards of living tend to sup- 
plant those with higher standards when the two come 
into close competition. There are many places in the 
world where this process is going on to-day. 

In Transylvania the Rumanians and Magyars come 
into keen competition. The Rumanian peasants, with 
their lower standards of living, are increasing more rap- 
idly than the ^Magyar peasants and are slowly, but stead- 
ily, pushing them back. The Rumanian peasants have 
been a mountain people having hard work to make a 
bare living. As they creep down from the mountains, 
they find living easier and have but little trouble in dis- 
placing the people of the plains, who have developed 
higher standards of living. They can pay a higher ren- 
tal for land or a higher price when they buy, because 
they use a smaller proportion of the total product to sus- 
tain themselves. Not only are the Rumanians supplant- 
ing the Magyars, but they are Rumanizing those who re- 
main behind. The Magyars who stay to compete with 
the Rumanians are comine: to live as the Rumanians and 



4^6 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

to speak their language. A friend of mine told me of 
instances he had personally observed when Magyars in 
blood even denied that they were Magyars and claimed 
to be Rumanians, so dominant had everything Rumanian 
become in many localities. 

On other frontiers of Hungary the same process has 
been going on. The Slovaks and the Ruthenians are 
supplanting the Magyars on the northeast frontier. 
When we realize how this process of infiltration of 
peoples having lower standards of living threatened the 
dominance of the Magyars not only in the outlying 
provinces of Hungary, but even in the central plain, 
where they have been settled for a thousand years or 
more, we shall better understand why they resorted to 
questionable methods to make good Magyars out of Ru- 
manians, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croatians, and other of 
the Slavic groups by which they are surrounded. The 
Magyars felt that they must either Magyarize the peoples 
who surrounded them or see themselves slowly perish as 
a dominant race, and finally be entirely supplanted by 
these peoples who could live more cheaply than they. 
There is not the least doubt that they were correct in 
diagnosing the situation. They laid themselves open to 
severe condemnation because of the methods they adopted 
to effect the Magyarizing of the foreign elements within 
their boundaries. 

In Prussia, where Pole and German come into compe- 
tition, the story is the same. Prussia did everything that 
Prussian minds could devise to Prussianize the Poles in 
her portion of the old kingdom of Poland. All her 
conscious efforts were in vain. The Prussian authorities 
complained that the Poles multiplied so much more rap- 



CHEAP LABOR 46T 

idly than the Germans that every year saw the real Polish 
frontier a little closer to Berlin. Even when German 
colonies, aided by the Government, were planted as 
a breakwater to the Polish tide and as centers from 
which a German culture should radiate to the Poles, 
they were swamped by the Poles because of their pa- 
triotism and their greater rate of natural increase.. 
The colonists were unable to compete with the Poles 
in the renting and purchase of land. The Prus- 
sians, as the Magyars, went at the whole matter of as- 
similation in a way to arouse antagonism and make it a 
point of national honor on the part of their subjects not 
to yield to their rulers in any respect; but one funda- 
mental reason for the failure of their carefully laid plans 
is to be found in the fact that they were dealing with 
peoples having lower standards of living and therefore 
greater power of reproduction. They could not com- 
pete economically with the Poles ; consequently they were 
being displaced. Both the Prussians and the Magyars 
might have been able to assimilate their foreign elements 
if different methods had been adopted, but nothing they 
could do would have prevented the peoples with lower 
standards of living from becoming a constantly increase 
ing proportion of their total populations. It was the 
consciousness of this fact that made them over-zealous in 
their efforts at assimilation. 

In our own country we have many examples of this 
principle of population growth. In many industries we 
have had a constant succession of employees of different 
nationalities succeeding one another because the latest 
arrivals had lower standards of living and could under- 
bid those who had acquired slightly better standards^ 



468 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

In every case the new-comers had also the higher birth- 
rate. 

In the packing houses of Chicago the Irish and Ger- 
mans were supplanted by the Slavs of various nationali- 
ties, and recently the Slavs have been yielding to the 
negroes. This process has been obvious, and no one 
would deny for a moment that cheap labor can supplant 
more expensive labor in a highly mechanized industry 
like meat-packing. What is not s,o generally recognized, 
is that the latest arrivals, having the lowest standards of 
living {with the possible exception of the negroes) also 
produce a larger proportion of the children of the next 
generation than the people whose jobs they take. 

In the iron and steel industry the competition between 
people with different standards of living has been even 
more marked than in the meat-packing industry. The 
English, Scotch, and Welsh gave way to the Irish and 
Germans. After the Homestead strike most of these 
north Europeans were supplanted by Slavs and Italians. 
Recently negroes have become numerous in the industry. 
Somewhat the same series of changes has taken place in 
coal-mining. In all such cases the most obvious fact is 
that people with little skill and low standards of living 
have been taking the places of workmen having higher 
standards of living. W^hat has not become so clear, al- 
though it is just as certain, is that all these groups of 
new-comers have contributed more than their due pro- 
portion to the numbers of the next generation. Thus the 
process of supplanting has gone on ; but since it has been 
much more difficult to S'^e than the process of individual 
displacement, most people have not realized that it was 
going on. 



CHEAP LABOR 469 

In this country it has not been possible to measure the 
extent of the supplanting of the people with higher stand- 
ards by those having lower standards of living as could 
be done in Europe. New-comers have been employed in 
manufacturing and mining rather than engaged in ag- 
riculture, and consequently have not been fixed in a defi- 
nite location, where their expansion could be easily seen. 
Our Federal Census Bureau has data in its files which 
would throw much light upon the relative rates of in- 
crease of people recently arrived here and those of older 
stock, but has never tabulated and published them. 

From a great variety of sources, however, we get bits 
of information which show clearly that the process of 
supplanting is going steadily forward in our urban com- 
munities. As long ago as 1850 it was observed in New 
England that the families of the old stock were not as 
large as those of the recently arrived Irish. Now it is 
the French Canadians, Jews, and Italians who are sup- 
planting not only the older natives, but the Irish, Eng- 
lish, Germans, and Scandinavians who came to us in the 
latter half of the nineteenth century. 

Not long ago I had occasion to visit some of the more 
hilly regions of central New York in the region of aban- 
doned farms. The old American stock, chiefly Connecti- 
cut farmer Yankees, which settled in this region about 
125 or 150 years ago, is still the dominant stock in most 
settlements. A few years ago several families of Finns 
settled in one of the neighborhoods. Other families soon 
joined them, and to-day they are gradually displacing 
the Americans. In several neighborhoods they consti- 
tute a majority of the population. There is no doubt 
that they will continue to supplant the Americans in this 



470 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

part of the country until it becomes wholly a Finnish 
settlement. They have low standards of living, permit- 
ting of putting children to work at an early age, of work- 
ing the women and girls in the fields, of going barefoot 
during the warm weather, of keeping house in a rather 
primitive manner, etc., which enables them to raise large 
families without feeling any deprivation or hardship. 
The Americans cannot compete with them, and are selling 
out as rapidly as they can find purchasers, just as their 
fellow-countrymen are doing in the rich California val- 
leys which the Japanese have invaded. 

Again let me state the principle of population growth 
I have illustrated above: when peoples having different 
standards of living come into direct competition, the 
people having the lower standards will increase in num- 
bers more rapidly than the people having the higher 
standards, and will, in the natural course of events, 
supplant the latter. The rate at which the process of 
supplanting will go on will depend upon the degree 
of difference in the standards of living of the compet- 
ing groups. If there is but little difference in their 
standards, the process will go forward slowly, perhaps 
imperceptibly ; if the difference is great, the process will 
be rapid and will be easy to observe. 

The explanation of this situation is simple. Always 
and everywhere that complex group of social and eco- 
nomic customs, called the standard of living, has great 
inertia. People do not like to change their habits of 
life, and it usually takes several generations of them to 
make any large change, even in a society so accustomed 
to change as that of western Europe and America. 
.Changes in the standard of living in an upward direction, 



CHEAP LABOR 471 

although slow, take place with greater ease and rapidity 
than changes tending to lower the standard of living, be- 
cause they are not accompanied by any new physical 
hardship. Changes tending to lower the standard of liv- 
ing are resisted with great tenacity and will not be en- 
dured if it is possible to prevent them. One of the 
simplest and most certain ways of preserving one 's stand- 
ards in the face of competition tending to reduce them 
is to limit the number of persons dependent on a given 
income to that which it will support in the customary 
manner. Consequently, as the death-rate falls among a 
people acquiring a higher standard of living, the birth- 
rate falls. When people have acquired the habits that 
go with a high standard of living and find themselves 
forced into competition with people having a lower stand- 
ard, they again reduce their birth-rate by putting off 
marriage to a later date, by remaining single, and by 
limiting the number of births. 

In the very nature of the case a people of lower stand- 
ards introduced among a people of higher standards has 
a lower death-rate than it has been accustomed to, be- 
cause of better sanitation, better medical care, more abun- 
dant and wholesome food, and more adequate shelter. It 
is inevitable, therefore, that it should increase in numbers 
very rapidly and that its children should take the places 
of those who would have been born to the people of higher 
standards if they had been able to support larger fami- 
lies in their accustomed manner. 

From the point of view ^of population growth, there- 
fore, a constantly replenished supply of *' cheap labor' ^ 
means a constantly larger proportion of our population 
coming from the races and nationalities furnishing this 



472 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

cheap labor and, ohversely, a constantly smaller propor- 
tion fram the groups with higher standards of living. 
This is as certain as it is that the sun will rise to-morrow. 
In the long run this aspect of the problem of cheap labor 
is the most important, and it is greatly to be regretted 
that it is often overlooked by those discussing this ques- 
tion. In my judgment a large proportion of the easy 
optimism so characteristic of most talk about immigra- 
tion and cheap labor is due, not to a careful considera- 
tion of the problems involved and a well-grounded faith 
in our ability to solve them satisfactorily, but rather to 
the failure to study the situation in all its manifold 
aspects and, therefore, to think it much simpler than it 
really is. 

I believe that up to the present time the older Amer- 
ican stock from northern and western Europe has held 
its own in competition with the newer stocks from south- 
ern and eastern Europe. The explanation is that a large 
majorit}^ of our people, those living in the open country 
and in small cities and villages, have not come into com- 
petition with people having lower standards of living. 
As a consequence, they have not been forced to reduce 
their birth-rate as rapidly as that part of the older stock 
living in the cities, where the competition has been keen. 
The rural population has been able not only to hold its 
own, but to increase faster than the newer immigrants, 
because of the relatively low death-rate. When, how- 
ever, the newer immigrants begin to settle in the open 
country in considerahle numbers, we shall find the people 
of the older stock reducing their birth-rate rapidly and 
yielding up the land to the new-comers. It is to be hoped 



CHEAP LABOR 473 

that we shall not wait until we are confronted by this 
actual condition to take measures to insure the protec- 
tion of American stock from a competition in which it 
has no chance of survival. 



CHAPTER 29 

NEW AGRAKIAN POLICIES IN AUSTRALIA AND 
CALIFORNIA 

By Elwood Mead 

THE doctrine that people have a moral right to go to 
any country they elect is not recognized by other en- 
lightened countries. Australia and Canada exclude all 
Orientals. Japan herself will not permit aliens to own 
land. It will not permit Chinese or Korean coolies to 
settle in Japan as farm laborers, the reason being that 
it would lower the wages of the Japanese. And in this 
the Japanese Government displays sound statesmanship. 

Our country stands at the parting of the ways. It 
must either protect its white civilization by excluding 
the brown, or it must be prepared for continued rural 
conflicts, which will grow more bitter in time. ''A house 
divided against itself cannot stand" is as true of this 
situation as it was of slavery. East is East and West 
is West. Our soil and our flag cannot sustain and pro- 
tect both. If California's rural life becames a patch- 
work of black, white, and brown communities, nothing 
but unending strife can result. 

The political bulwark of this nation to-day is the 
55,000,000 people of English or north European ancestry 
that created our free institutions. They are the leaders 
of our social and political life. They have shown such. 

474 



NEW AGRARIAN POLICIES 475 

exceptional capacity for government, such regard for lib- 
erty, law, and order, that we should be careful how we 
dilute or submerge this blood by a large influx of peo- 
ples whose respect for free instiutions and capacity for 
democratic growth is unknown. Our enduring welfare 
will be promoted not so much in increase in population as 
by maintenance of high standards of human life. 

Before we people our unused land with aliens we 
should try to make it a home for American boys and 
girls. There is need for a substitute for the Homestead 
Act and for rural planning which will restore to farm 
life the social and recreative activities it has lost. If 
we make it possible for young men and women to buy 
farms large enough to give them employment and a com- 
fortable living, if we recognize the value of the farm la- 
borer as man and citizen, we shall have done much to 
oifset the present lure of the city. If the farm laborer 
and the farmer can call the house ihey live in, the trees 
they plant, the grass and flowers they care for, their 
own because they are part of the soil which is theirs, 
young, ambitious, and inspiring people will have some- 
thing to work for and strive for that the city cannot 
furnish. 

We have reached a time when we should begin to plan 
rural life. Rural development has been migratory and 
speculative in the past. In the foremost countries of 
Europe people on the farms have an attachment to par- 
ticular farms and to the interests of their particular 
neighborhoods that is not felt in America. The nations 
of western Europe have found that they must in some 
way enable farm laborers to own their homes, and ten- 
ant farmers to become farm-owners if they are to check 



'476 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

rural migration and rural discontent. To achieve this 
result, Germany spent over four hundred million dollars 
between 1906 and 1914. The British Government spent 
over five hundred million dollars between 1903 and 1914 
to put an end to the political and social unrest of the 
Irish peasant. State aid has been actively extended in 
France to enable the people of the country to own their 
farms. Perhaps the most striking example of the value 
of land-ownership and the influence it exerts in creating 
independence, industry, and contentment is to be seen 
in Denmark, which Mty years ago faced the same situ- 
ation that faces us to-day. Copenhagen was then a 
great industrial city partly surrounded by sand-dunes. 
The tenant farmer and the farm laborer were discour- 
aged. They were leaving the land, flocking to the fac- 
tories, or going to other countries. The nation faced 
bankruptcy. To avert this disaster, Denmark bought 
large estates, sold them in small tracts to the tenants 
and farm laborers, helped struggling people to establish 
schools and cooperative institutions, and thus gave them 
that sense of security, pride, and independence that goes 
with the ownership of farms and which is a great agent 
in building up character, patriotism, and a strong na- 
tional life. Thirty years ago ninety per cent of Den- 
mark was farmed by tenants. To-day ninety per cent 
is farmed by owners, and Denmark, in certain features 
of rural life, is a school for the rest of the world. 

Australia is the eastern frontier of the white man's 
world, and California is the western. Only a fringe of 
the coast country is settled. Cheap labor would bring 
to Australian farm owners immense and sudden wealth. 
But people of the Commonwealth have had the fortitude 



NEW AGRARIAN POLICIES 477 

and self-denial to ignore the temptation, to put aside 
immediate gain, in order to protect the rights and op- 
portunities of the unborn. They have chosen slower 
material progress with a higher human standard. Their 
aim is not rapid material progress, but a white civiliza- 
tion worthy of the best traditions of the mother country. 

This policy was not adopted to protect union labor in 
cities, as some have assumed, though the labor party has 
always supported it. The central idea has been to cre- 
ate a real economic democracy on the land. Cheap Asi- 
atic labor on the sugar plantations was done away with 
when political leaders realized that white people would 
not stay if they had to compete with it. The caste feel- 
ing created by Chinese labor existed in Australia long 
after the coolie had disappeared. It was shown by the 
intense hatred against the small farm. Young men said, 
''You are trying to make Chinese out of us." Later, 
when these young men found the small farm the road 
to landed independence, this prejudice vanished. 

The people of California to-day are eating Australian 
jam grown in orchards planted by white settlers who 
were helped by the Government to get started on the 
land. To provide these farms, in the last ten years the 
Government has spent six hundred million dollars buy- 
ing privately owned estates. These have been cut up 
into blocks of suitable size, and thrown open to settlement 
on easy terms and conditions. The Australian states 
have provided for cooperative communities and homes for 
farm workers. Between 1901 and 1918, 3,471,795 acres 
of land were bought, subdivided, and settled. 

Australia has shown that white people of English an- 
cestry will do the squat labor which we are told no one 



478 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

but Orientals will do. The 1918 Commonwealth Year 
Book shows that more than half the irrigated farms were 
granted to discharged soldiers. These farms averaged 
fifty-two acres each. In the Sheapparter district of 
Victoria there are 255 families where originally there had 
been twenty. At Cohuna the settlers have made such 
progress that many paid in full for their land in seven 
years, although they had thirty-one and one-half years 
in which to complete payments. In Koyuga there are 
fifty settlers with good houses, fine orchards, and fine 
crops of lucerne and vegetables, where in November, 
1910, there was not a house, a family, or an acre of cul- 
tivated land. These impartial records show that not 
only are white people with the same blood and traditions 
as ourselves doing all the work of farm and gardens, but 
that they are meeting their payments, living in better 
houses, owning better stock, and creating a better rural 
civilization than existed before the Australian land policy 
went into effect — vastly better than would exist if they 
had looked to Asia for men to do the hard and disagree- 
able work. 

The time has come for us to show whether we have the 
same high regard for free institutions and the same pride 
and respect for the ideal of our forefathers that Aus- 
tralia has shown. If we have, we must help white people 
live on the land on farms and in homes they own. 

California is the only American State that has made a 
beginning at doing this. Three years ago the legislature 
appropriated $260,000 to test what could be done by 
carefully-thought-out plans to help landless poor men 
own farms and to help farm laborers secure homes of 
their own. The money was advanced not as a gift, but 



NEW AGRARIAN POLICIES 479 

as a loan, to be repaid in fifty years with four per cent 
interest. Settlers have been helped by long-time pay- 
ments and by a low rate of interest by having in each 
settlement a friendly capable adviser who gives to all 
the people the benefit of good business brains, help, and 
advice in cooperation in buying and selling, in provid- 
ing for the education of the children, and in social ac- 
tivities. The settlers have had the benefit of a compe- 
tent architect in planning their homes, and as a result 
they have a comfort, convenience, and beauty not found 
in an unplanned settlement. The homes of the twenty- 
six farm laborers win the enthusiastic praise of every 
visitor to Durham. The children of these laborers have 
the same pride in their homes that the children of farm- 
owners have in theirs. There are no caste distinctions. 
The farm worker and the farm-owner belong to the same 
social layer. 

All of these settlers are Americans. They are doing 
every kind of work that is to be done by any one on a 
farm or garden. They weed onions, milk cows, pitch 
hay, and gather in the community center for the weekly 
dance. They are all working long hours, living anxious, 
self-denying lives in order to make and save the money 
needed to meet their obligation to the State ; but they are 
doing this cheerfully with a pride and satisfaction which 
show that they are real successors of the pioneering 
homesteader. 

Durham is making Americans out of people who, be- 
fore they came to the settlement, were strangers to our 
institutions and to one another. The ancestors of these 
settlers came from thirteen different countries, but there 
is no separation on racial lines. They work together in 



4.80 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the cooperative stock-breeders', milk-sellers', and irriga- 
tion associations. Pedro, the Spaniard, had been natu- 
ralized many years before he came to Durham, but he 
had lived the life of an alien. He had worked on farms, 
lived in a bunk-house, and when the job was over had 
gone to town and spent his money. He had had no part 
in the social life of any community. Now he owns two 
acres of land. He does not, as he expresses it, "work 
around." He is a fixture, a permanent part of the 
neighborhood which he is helping to build up. He is 
saving money, and his savings go to pay for his house, 
to plant trees, to paint his fence, and to help build the 
pavilion in the community center. He no longer wastes 
his life or his money because he now feels that, like 
St. Paul, '^he is a citizen of no mean country." 

Is such a life not worth striving for? Must it not 
make for peace and happiness? Must it not strengthen 
the very foundations of democracy by making men who 
to-day are, through no fault of their own, propertyless 
drifters, stockholders in the greatest of all corporations, 
the United States of America? "Would it not be the 
shrewdest of investments if the country were to plant a 
thousand Durhams from coast to coast? 

Such an undertaking cannot be approached with a 
small purse. We must understand that world happiness 
must be financed on the scale of world wars. In the 
eight years before the year 1914 Germany did not hesi- 
tate to spend four hundred million dollars on a plan 
like this. During the same period Great Britain ad- 
vanced half a billion dollars to the peasants of Ireland 
for similar purposes. It requires statesmanship to go 
at it in this large way. Have we the statesmen? 



CHAPTER 30 
SHALL EAST WED WEST? 

RACIAL INTERMARRIAGE 



The whole difficult and technical problem of racial 
inteiTnarriage must eventually figure in a general solu- 
tion of the Oriental question. For the present it seems 
to be relegated to the background; but it cannot well 
be kept there indefinitely. It is therefore important 
to present a scientific study of the subject. No better 
one is available than that made by Mr. S. J. Holmes of 
the University of California. Mr. Holmes is one of the 
few American biologists who has given particular at- 
tention to the new science of eugenics. He is specially 
qualified to deliver an opinion on the effects of race mix- 
ture and our national policy toward it. His following 
study was presented at the San Diego Conference on 
Problems of the Pacific. 



RACE intermingling is a subject whose importance in 
relation to the welfare of future generations can 
scarcely be overestimated. It is a subject upon which 
there is no unanimity even among those whose knowledge 
and training would qualify them to speak with high as- 
surance. One encounters in the treatment of race amal- 
gamation a considerable mass of prejudice and opinion 
that rests largely on an emotional basis. Owing to the 
peculiar nature of the problem dealt with, this prejudice 

481 



482 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

is not merely an obstacle, as it always is, to the discov- 
ery of truth; it is an actual factor in the problem itself. 

Race mingling has two kinds of effects, the biological 
and the social. It wnll be expedient to treat these sepa- 
rately, although they have important interrelations. 

As for the biological effects, we find two extreme views 
prevailing among laymen, and especially among those 
journalists who have read widely in the popular liter- 
ature and in the older scientific records about races and 
race mingling. These two extreme views are: 

1. That favored by one school of anthropologists and 
accepted eagerly by most radical internationalists as a 
basis for their political beliefs; namely, that the differ- 
ences of mentality and behavior which we see in races 
are mainly the result of environment, not of heredity. 
From this it follows that no evil results ensue from race 
intermingling. A baby taken from the meanest peasant 
woman in the interior of China can be brought to Cleve- 
land, Ohio, raised side by side with American children 
there, and develop just as they do; and if he marries 
an American woman when he grows up, the children will 
be, in that environment, good American children. 

2. The view favored by a large number of students and 
by many men who have personally lived in contact with 
some alien race; namely, that racial differences are 
hereditary and profound, and not to be broken down by 
intermarriage without fearful penalty in the form of 
mongrel offspring that will turn out to be inferior. 

The first view is held to-day by thousands of Christian 
thinkers and by the American liberals. It has been con- 
sistently applied to the Japanese question in California 
by such publications as "The Nation," which stands 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 483 

frankly for the ''entire abolition of race discrimination" 
and "the union of all peoples in a world league in which 
the nations shall be equal. ' ' 

The second view has been widely championed in many 
popular books, such as ''The Passing of the Great Race," 
by Madison Grant, and "The Rising Tide of Color," by 
Lothrop Stoddard. It has recently been applied to the 
Japanese problem by Chester W. Rowell, editor of the 
Fresno "Republican." Mr. Rowell, writing in "The 
New Republic," says: 

"It is not a question entirely of economies or of civilization. 
Economies can be temporary, and we have already assimilated 
civilizations quite as alien as the Japanese. It is a question 
of physical race, and race is hereditary. It lasts forever. 

"The only real safety is in separation. Nature erected a 
barrier which man will overpass only at his peril." 

Or, as the editor of the San Francisco "Bulletin" puts 
it with pious touch : 

"They [the Japanese] are a racial danger, and our aversion^ 
to assimilating them is not a question for argument; it is a 
providentially implanted instinct making for the preservation 
of the wliite race." 

Both of these views, when carefully checked up in the 
light of modern biological research, turn out to be the 
products of imperfect observations and inaccurate an- 
alysis of complex facts. Those who advance either opin- 
ion have not grasped the extraordinary difficulty of de- 
ciding in any given case whether a characteristic which 
we call racial is "in the blood" or is a matter of up- 
bringing. 

The solution of the biological problems of race mixture 



484 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

is rendered peculiarly difficult by lying outside the 
sphere of feasible experimental attack, and by our fre- 
quent inability to distinguish the effects of heredity from 
those of environment. It is not to be wondered at that 
we find the opinions of many writers on the subject based 
more on the effects of inbreeding and cross-breeding in 
lower forms, where it is possible to come to definite con- 
clusions by controlled experimentation, than by the ac- 
tual investigation of the problem in the human species. 
Research is making it more and more evident that the 
laws of heredity which obtain among plants and animals 
are followed also in the transmission of human traits, 
and the biologist therefore turns to the lower organisms 
for light upon the problem of race mixture in man. 

When we study inbreeding and cross-breeding in lower 
forms, however, we meet with quite varied results. Al- 
though progress in their interpretation has been made 
since the rediscovery of Mendel's law, several questions 
of prime importance still remain obscure. The mass 
of observational and experimental data collected by 
Darwin in his work on the *' Variation of Animals and 
Plants Under Domestication," seemed to demonstrate 
overwhelmingly that the crossing of distinct, but closely 
related, varieties of plants and animals produced as a 
rule progeny of enhanced vigor. He says : 

"When we consider the various facts now given which 
plainly show that good follows from crossing, ancT less plainly 
that evil follows from close interbreeding, and when we bear 
in mind that throughout the organic world elaborate provision 
has been made for the occasional union of distinct individuals, 
the evidence of a great law of nature is, if not proved, at least 
rendered in the highest degree probable; namely that the cioss- 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 485 

ing: of animals and plants which are not closely related to each 
other is highly beneficial or even necessary, and that inter- 
breeding prolonged during many generations is highly injuri- 
ous." 

Since the publication of Darwin's work this general 
conclusion has been confirmed by a large amount of addi- 
tional data. To take but a single illustration from the 
breeding of corn. The work of Shull and that of East 
and Hays has shown that varieties of corn kept from the 
access of foreign pollen produced in general a marked 
decrease of yield in successive generations. However, 
when two such inbred strains were crossed, there followed 
an increase of yield in striking excess of the produce of 
either parental stock. Thus two inbred varieties of 
Leaming dent, each yielding about two bushels per acre, 
produced, when crossed, a variety yielding about 24.5 
bushels per acre. The first, or Fl, generation of such 
crosses was found to be more productive than the second, 
or F2, generation, as one would naturally expect. The 
heterozygous, or mixed, state in corn is apparently, there- 
fore, a condition of maximum productivity. It is well 
known that crosses between types which are distantly 
related often give rise, when they produce any offspring 
at all, to sterile or partially sterile progeny; but it is 
not rare also for quite closely related races to produce 
inferior or relatively infertile strains. And it must be 
remembered that many plants which are normally self- 
fertilizing, such as our common garden peas and beans, 
may reproduce without deterioration for an indefinite 
period. 

Breeders of animals have long been persuaded that 
close inbreeding, although advantageous for the perpetu- 



486 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

ation or enhancement of desired qualities, brings about 
in course of time a deterioration which must be checked 
by an occasional infusion of foreign blood. But recent 
experimental work in animal breeding has placed the 
matter in a light quite different from that in which it 
was formerly regarded. It is true that inbreeding is 
sometimes productive of undesirable results, but it is 
also true that in some animals it may be carried on with 
impunity for a large number of generations. In the 
recently carefully controlled investigations of Miss King 
on albino rats, to take but one example, it was proved 
that the closest inbreeding — namely brother and sister 
matings — carried for twenty-five generations failed to 
cause any deterioration in growth, vigor or fertility. 

The results of inbreeding in animals, as in plants, are 
sometimes bad, sometimes good, and often indifferent, 
and the influence of cross-breeding is good, bad, or in- 
different, depending upon the particular strains be- 
tween which crosses are made. When we inquire con- 
cerning the causes of these diverse results, we may derive 
some very probable explanations from Mendel's law of 
inheritance. Most Mendelians would now concede, as 
several writers contended before Mendel's law became 
generally known, that inbreeding per se is in no wise 
injurious, but that it may become so if both parents are 
bearers of latent or recessive characteristics of an un- 
desirable kind. In other words, inbreeding does not cre- 
ate defects, hut it affords a condition hy wJiich latent 
defects may he hrought to light. Heterozygosis covers a 
multitude of imperfections; an unusually heterozygous 
species, like Indian corn, may keep up appearance by vir- 
tue of its mixed state and fail to reveal its recessive 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 487 

weaknesses. But as continued inbreeding makes a stock 
more and more homozygous, or uniform in its germinal 
constitution, it may come to manifest more and more re- 
cessive traits that are productive of deterioration. 

Viewed in this manner, the varied effects of inbreed- 
ing and cross-breeding may be regarded as having their 
basis in the varied segregations and combinations of 
Mendelian factors. This conclusion, if valid, marks a 
distinct gain in our insight into the problem under dis- 
cussion. Knowledge of the hereditary constitution of 
parent stocks will enable us to predict with considerable 
probability the outcome of a given mating. With sound 
stock, the results of inbreeding are usually sound. And 
unth a stock carrying recessive defects, the process of 
inbreeding is very apt t^o result in deterioration. 

The effects of inbreeding in man are in accord with 
this conclusion. We find imbecility, deafness, insanity, 
and various other defects arising in families which result 
from consanguineous matings. The kind of traits 
brought out through inbreeding are found to vary greatly 
in different stocks, as we would expect according to the 
interpretation just mentioned. Davenport, in speaking 
of different inbred communities, says : 

"Consanguinity on Martha's Vineyard results in 11 per cent, 
deaf mutes and a number of hermaphrodites; in Point Judith 
in 13 per cent, idiocy and 7 per cent, insanity; in an island off 
the Maine Coast the consequence is intellectual dullness; in 
Block Island loss of fecundity; in some of the 'Banks' off the 
coast of North Carolina, suspiciousness and an inability to pass 
beyond the third or fourth year of school; in a peninsula on 
the east coast of Chesapeake Bay the defect is dwarfness (G. 
A. Penrose, 1905). There is no one trait that results from 



488 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

the marriage of kin; the result is determined by the specific 
defect in the germ plasm of the common ancestor." 

In contrast to such effects as these we have numerous 
cases in which consanguineous matings have resulted in 
no noticeable deterioration, and several instances in 
which they have been followed by very desirable results. 
A well-known illustration is furnished by the family of 
Charles Darwin. Darwin married his first cousin, Emma 
Wedgewood, and of his four sons three became fellows 
of the Royal Society, while the other, Leonard Darwin, 
has won a noteworthy position as a writer on economies 
and eugenics. Consanguineous marriages tend to con- 
serve valuable combinations of hereditary traits, and if 
wisely made, they would lead to the perpetuation of the 
most valuable types of humanity. The marriages most 
important to society are those of the best with the best. 
Where the best mates with the worst there is a dissipa- 
tion and waste of good inheritance, and where the worst 
mates with worst, the progeny, other things equal, are 
in every way undesirable and tend to become eliminated 
through the process of natural selection. 

Inbreeding, therefore, should not be indiscriminately 
condemned on account of the ill effects which occasion- 
ally follow from it. Combinations of germ plasms which 
are bad enough to lead to the elimination of individu- 
alisms which arise from them are by no means an un- 
mixed evil. They tend to purge the race of hereditary 
factors which, if disseminated in the general population, 
would give rise to a general lowering of our racial in- 
heritance. 

WTien we pass on to consider the complementary sub- 
jects of cross-breeding in man, we should bear in mind 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 489 

the dangers of basing conclusions upon what occurs 
among lower forms. There, as we have seen, the results 
are exceedingly varied, some crosses being superior in 
vigor to either parent stock, while others are but puny 
runts, which perpetuate themselves with difficulty, if at 
all. The opponents as well as the proponents of racial 
amalgamation find abundant support for their conten- 
tion by an appeal to analogy. But whatever side of the 
question is most strongly supported by such arguments, 
the only evidence upon which much reliance can be placed 
must be yielded by a comparison of the products of race 
mixture Avith the pure-bred stocks from which they arose. 
When one goes over the literature on this subject and 
endeavors to select what is not rendered entirely worth- 
less by defective observation or race prejudice, he finds 
a bewildering variety of judgments. 

Consider the frequently quoted opinion of Louis Agas- 
siz on the Brazilian cross-breeds : 

"Let any one who doubts the evil of this mixture of races 
and is inclined from mistaken philanthropy to break down all 
barriers between them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the 
deterioration consequent upon the amalgamation of races, more 
widespread here than in other country in the world and which 
is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the 
negro, and the Indian, leaving a mongrel nondescript type, 
deficient in physical and mental energy." 

Mr. Schultze, in his book, ''Race or Mongrel?" speak- 
ing of the race mixture in Peru, tells us : 

"The degeneration there is even greater and has been more 
rapid than in the other South American countries and the 
cause is the infusion of Chinese blood into the veins of the 
white-negro-Indian compound. There are scarcely any Indo- 



490 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

Europeans of pure blood in Peru, for with the exception of 
pure Indians in the interior, the population consists of mesti- 
zos, Mulattoes, Zambos, terceroons, quadroons, cbolos, musties, 
fustics and yellows; crosses between Spaniards and Indians, 
Spaniards and negroes, Spaniards and yellows ; crosses between 
mongrels of one kind and mongrels of other kinds. All kinds 
of crossbreeds infest the land. The result is incredible rotten- 



Similar conditions, according to the author, prevail in 
South America, in general, as well as in Mexico, Central 
America, and the West Indies. Schultze, in this book, 
which is a tirade against race mixture the world over, 
attributed the downfall of most great civilizations of the 
past to racial hybridization: "Promiscuous crossings 
destroyed the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the 
Romans, and the Lombards,'' he declares, and according 
to him, it is only the pure races that have been leaders 
in civilization. More recently, Mr. Madison Grant has 
expressed the opinion that the product of race mixture 
is usually on the same level as the inferior race, and 
that race-crossing therefore can bring about only dete- 
rioration. 

It would be easy to fill pages with vituperations which 
have been poured out upon the mixed races. It is 
equally easy to fill pages with accounts of the alleged 
racial benefits of amalgamation. The sociologist Novi- 
cow sings the praises of miscegenation as loudly as others 
have condemned it. He tells us : 

"It is recognized that a race deteriorates by consanguineous 
union and that it is improved by crossings. Crossings are in- 
dispensable to sustain and augment the vigor of a race. They 
are of a utility so incontestable that they should be augmented 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 491 

as much as possible. In our time, many societies, civilized aa 
well as barbarous, seek to avoid a mixture with other groups. 
But they bring upon themselves the worst of evils, the degra- 
dation of the race." 

It is vi^ell known that most cultivated peoples repre- 
sent a mixture of several ethnic stocks, and an inquiry 
into the ancestry of men eminent for intellectual achieve- 
ments shows that they are very frequently of mixed 
ethnic origin. Few indeed have resulted from combin- 
ing such diverse races as the black, yellow, and white, 
but it is common to find in their ancestry combinations 
of such groups as the Celts, Scandinavians, Anglo-Sax- 
ons, and various Nordic and Alpine and Mediterranean 
stocks. Within the limits of the better subdivisions of 
the white race there is no evidence that crossing is pro- 
ductive of the least deterioration. On the other hand, 
it has never been proved that such crosses tend to be 
superior to the relatively pure products of either com- 
ponent stock. But what can be said of the combination 
of such races as the Caucasian and negro, the negro and 
the Mongolian, or the Polynesians and the American In- 
dians ? 

It must be admitted that so far as physical vigor and 
fecundity are concerned, many of such extreme crosses 
have shown no evidence of falling below the average of 
either parental stock. The Rehboter hybrids between the 
Boers and Hottentots in South Africa are described by 
Fisher, who has made a careful and thorough study of 
these people, as a healthy, vigorous, and prolific stock. 
Boas says that observation of half-breed Indians shows 
that a type taller than either parental race develops in 
the mixed blood, that the fertility of the mixed blood 



492 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

is unexcelled, and that he cannot find any evidence that 
would corrohorate the view so often expressed that the 
hybrid tends to degenerate. 

The Anglo-Poljaiesian inhabitants of Pitcairn and Nor- 
folk Islands, who sprang originally from a group of nine 
Englishmen, six Tahitian men, and fifteen Tahitian 
women, gave rise by 1905 to a healthy and flourishing 
population of 1059 persons. Many writers have praised 
the physical beauty of hybrid stocks in various parts of 
the world. Hoffman has described the Anglo-Chinese 
hybrids as people of good physique and mentality. 
There is abundant evidence that mulattoes, so far as 
mental development goes, are considerably superior to 
the full-blooded negro, though many observers are con- 
vinced that the mulattoes are physically inferior to both 
blacks and whites, and this opinion is supported by the 
measurements of numerous recruits during the Civil 
War; but the claim that the mulattoes are relatively 
infertile and tend to die out in a few generations is not 
based on adequate data. 

An impartial survey of available evidence leads us to 
infer that with the exception of the probabh^ inferior 
physique of the mulatto, the mixture of even the most dis- 
tinct races is not in itself productive of degeneracy 
either physically or mentally. Crosses of superior with 
inferior races may be below the level of the superior 
race, but this is owing to the admixture of inferior 
blood and not to race fusion per se. There is no ade- 
quate evidence that the products of the admixture of 
races of approximately the same degree of development 
are biologically inferior to either race. Neither can we 
say, on the whole, that these mixtures exhibit any marked 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 493 

degree of superiority. There may be, of course, certain 
combinations of traits that may be desirable. But ob- 
servation does not justify the assertion that in general 
the gains outweigh the losses. What we know of the re- 
sults of race-crossing in men fails to show any illustra- 
tions >of that conspicuous benefit that sometimes follows 
the crossing of related varieties of plants and animals. 
We have no analogue of the Burbank walnut, which 
greatly surpasses both its parent species in growth and 
vigor. 

It may be that careful study will show that there 
are certain races and peoples whose blood can be min- 
gled with great advantage. But it would we unwise, in 
the light of our present knowledge, to advocate a gen- 
eral amalgamation of races even on purely biological 
grounds. Race mingling is going on rapidly enough as 
it is, and it would he a part of prudence to study more 
closely just how it is working out before adopting the 
questionable policy of accelerating this process. A race 
of superior inheritance has little to gain and very much 
to lose by mingling its blood with that of an inferior 
people. There may be races of lower cultural level than 
others which carry an inheritance as good or better than 
the so-called superior races. The mingling of such races 
may be advantageous biologically and eventually from a 
cultural point of view, also; but before racial fusion 
can be advocated, it should be shown that the less-de- 
veloped race is of equal worth with the more advanced 
one in native quality. We should not be compelled to 
prove the native inferiority of the more backward race. 
The burden of proof should rest upon those who uphold 
the doctrine of essential race equality to establish the 



MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

fact that races are essentially equal in their inherited en- 
dowments before advocating the intermarriage of distinct 
races of mankind. 

The verdict which we believe the cautious biologist is 
compelled to give is that, in the light of our present 
knowledge, or perhaps we should say our present igno- 
rance, it is not advisable for a people of superior inheri- 
tance and proved accomplishments to fuse with a dis- 
tinct alien race. Race-fusion for us is a dangerous ex- 
periment. But while it is possible that in regard to mis- 
cegenation with certain alien races, future research may 
remove some of our ground for apprehension, our wisest 
course at present is the maintenance of racial integrity. 

Thus far we have been considering the mixture of 
races as a purely biological problem. We must now dis- 
cuss briefly the social aspects of miscegenation not merely 
because of their great importance, but because the biolog- 
ical results are in a measure dependent upon social causes. 
Race-mingling commonly occurs extensively between rela- 
tively inferior representatives of both races. This seems 
to be especially the case in the union of white and blacks 
in the United States, as has been shown by Mr. Hoffman 
in his study of the American negro. Pride of caste and 
position keeps races pure. And those who occupy the 
lower strata of society are more likely to contract unions 
with the members of the less cultivated race. Social 
causes, therefore, determine, to a certain degree at least, 
the type of marriage selection that occurs in interracial 
unions, and hence, to a certain degree also, the biological 
effects of miscegenation. Illegitimate unions between in- 
ferior races and the better stock of the superior race are 
a not infrequent result of race contact. The products of 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 495 

such unions may be biologically sound, but they are apt 
to occupy an uncertain social status and to prove unde- 
sirable additions to society. 

The social effects of miscegenation vary greatly from 
country to country. In large parts of South America 
it is no discredit to be a mongrel. Where pride of race 
is lost, and where there is an indiscriminate mingling 
of races, we usually find a backward people, devoid of 
enterprise and lacking in high intellectual activities. If 
we explain the shortcomings of the cross-breed as a prod- 
uct of his unfavorable social environment, we can only 
defend miscegenation by advocating the suppression of 
those sentiments and reactions which make human beings 
recoil from intimacy with human creatures who look, act, 
talk, or smell differently from their own kind. The feel- 
ings which keep people from accepting all races on equal 
terms are very deep-seated traits of human nature. It 
is, perhaps, possible that by the proper education from 
early childhood these feelings might be largely overcome. 
If such a transformation could be effected, it is uncertain 
how it might react upon the development of those higher 
and finer traits of human nature whose cultivation we 
highly prize. 

But leaving this psychological question aside, we must 
face the practical difficulty that, however desirable it 
might be to abolish the feelings of race antagonism, 
our efforts in this direction would meet with a rather 
large amount of obstinate opposition. We must take 
human nature as we find it and deal with it accord- 
ingly. We may tell our neighbor that he should not 
cherish any unreasonable sentiments against the marriage 
of his daughter with a Polynesian or a native of Sene- 



496 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

gambia, but our neighbor would probably be little moved 
by our counsel, and even though we might oppose a log- 
ical refutation of all his objections to the match, he 
would doubtless retain a residue of sentiment — sheer 
prejudice we may call it — which no argument could dis- 
lodge. He might in turn tell me that I should have no 
scruples about eating human flesh, that such food is 
highly nutritious and easily digestible if properly pre- 
pared, and that it is poor economy in these days of ex- 
pensive living not to avail ourselves of this natural re- 
source. But if he were to refute completely all the ob- 
jections I might offer, I am quite sure that my unfounded 
squeamishneess would effectually deter me from the prac- 
tice of feasting off the dear remains of my esteemed 
contemporaries. 

There are, or have been, many peoples who felt about 
this matter of diet quite differently from what I do. 
There are also people who have no particular sentiments 
against indiscriminate miscegenation. After all, one 
might claim, it is merely a matter of taste, and what we 
should do is to break down those barriers of prejudice 
which prevent race-mingling and help to bring about a 
period of universal brotherhood and peace by the free 
intermarriage of the peoples of the earth. 

There are many to whom such a Utopian scheme has 
made a strong appeal. Against it may be urged not 
only the dangers of such a proceeding on biological 
grounds, but a number of considerations which show that 
such an attempt would be socially undesirable, if not 
disastrous. We find, as a matter of experience, that the 
mongrelization of humanity is accompanied only too fre- 
quently by the demoralization of social consciousness, 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 497 

the promotion of internal discord and political corrup- 
tion, moral laxity, and the development of vice and crime. 
Peoples that result from the mixture of distinct races 
have seldom, if ever, risen to great heights of intellec- 
tual achievement; and any nation which incorporates a 
considerable measure of the blood of an alien race, if 
we may judge from the lessons of history, is destined to 
decadence. It is essential for the welfare of a nation 
such as ours, which already contains a large amount of 
hereditary diversity in its population and is in no dan- 
ger of becoming ultra rigid through inbreeding, to keep 
itself free from the admixtures of distinct racial stock. 
Our problems of assimilation are sufficiently taxing now 
without our adding to them. The more diverse the racial 
elements that come to our shores, the slower their assimi- 
lation. The more trying and tense become their relations 
to our populations, the more amalgamation becomes rele- 
gated to the relatively ill favored of our race, the more 
undesirable is the status of the cross-breed and the more 
the hybrid population tends to sink in the social scale. 

It may be urged that many of these ill effects are the 
result of race prejudice. Be it so. Race prejudice is a 
very real thing; it is quite possible that it has important 
and valuable functions. It has served to keep races pure. 
And for a superior race to keep pure is a very important 
condition for the maintenance of its culture, as well as 
the most distinguishing virtues of its biological inheri- 
tance. 

As long as a people preserves its high endowments and 
avoids the fate of decadence which has so often overtaken 
peoples in the past, the maintenance of its integrity is 
not only a right, but an imperative duty. 



498 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

In saying this, we do not condemn race-crossing in 
general or on principle. Race-mingling affords a fruit- 
ful source of variability for the operation of natural se- 
lection, and it has doubtless been an important factor in 
the relatively rapid evolution of man from his animal 
ancestry. Among races of approximately equal endow- 
ment it may confer a number of advantages, but it is 
also a source of danger. In the light of our present 
knowledge of how particular crosses work out not only in 
the first generation, but in subsequent ones, the wisest 
counsel for a superior people in regard to race-mixture is 
to go slow and to play safe. 

The bearing of all this upon the Japanese question is 
now clear ; it may be summed up thus : 

1. While it is probable that the peculiar virtues and 
abilities of the Japanese people who have come to Hawaii 
and California depend largely upon inheritance, we are 
as yet ignorant of the extent to which they are the prod- 
ucts of past environmental conditions such as climate, 
food, working conditions, political customs, religion, and 
culture prevailing for many centuries in Japan. It 
would be desirable to have more definite knowledge of 
the inborn capacities of the Japanese before attempting 
to infer w^hat would probably be the result of crossing 
with racial stocks living in America. 

2. There is no trustworthy evidence at hand to show 
whether a cross-breeding of Japanese with various Euro- 
pean stocks results in a higher or in a lower human type. 
And yet it is important to learn the facts of this matter 
before race mixture gets out of hand. 

3. In view of these uncertainties, and on account of the 
great harm that might arise from ill-considered action, 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 499 

it would be best both for America and for Japan to take 
the prudent course and check the possibilities of exten- 
sive race mingling until both countries have made an ade- 
quate scientific study of its effects. 

4. Such a study can be made in Hawaii and in Cali- 
fornia, where the number of Japanese is great enough to 
facilitate observations and to give weight to statistics 
based upon them. Opportunities will doubtless be af- 
forded here or elsewhere for studying the issue of matings 
between the better-endowed representatives of the Japa- 
nese and whites ; it would be unfair to base general con- 
elusions on observations limited to the unions of the in- 
ferior members of the two races. 

5. But quite aside from the results of race fusion per 
se, the products of mixed marriages depend to a consid- 
erable extent upon the type of marriage selection which 
takes place. This matter should be studied also, so that 
we may be able to forecast with some degree of accuracy 
what types of mating would be most likely to result from 
more extensive race contact. If we should obtain a pre- 
ponderance of cross-breeds of inferior parentage, a result 
which experience with race-mixtures indicates would be 
quite likely to happen, there would be a further argu- 
ment against the union of Japanese and Americans. 

EVILS IN THE BIRTH-RATE 

In the meeting of Orientals and Occidentals, the 
birth-rate of the two races inevitably forces itself upon 
our attention. The biological fortunes of any race de- 
pend upon what is sometimes called its net fecundity, or 
its natural rate of increase. The crude birth-rate is, of 
course, only one factor in the increase of populations; 



500 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

countries that now show the highest birth-rate, as Mr. 
Thompson has pointed out, are those which increase the 
most slowly, if at all. The real rate of increase is deter- 
mined by the excess of births over deaths. And among 
many countries in which the birth-rate is low the death- 
rate has been reduced so much faster rsiatively that the 
natural rate of increase has become greater than it was a 
few years ago. In other words, many countries with low 
birth-rates are those which are now multiplying most 
rapidly. 

In "Considering these facts we must, of course, also 
reckon with the influence of war and conquest. Peoples 
expand as a result of successful conflicts. We are prone 
to look upon the conquering race as the expanding race. 
We may cite examples of the rapid spread of the Mon- 
golians and the Anglo-Saxons hy successful warfare 
which removes the obstacles to territorial expansion. 
But whatever war may do for a people, its biological 
function is for the most part nullified if it does not lead 
to an enhanced birth-rate. Where conquests do not lead 
to the acquisition of territory in which they may multiply 
with increased rapidit}^, or to acquiring advantages which 
may lead a country through developing its own industry 
to support a larger population, they are fruitless victories 
from the biological point of view, however important they 
may be in other respects. The biological influence of 
war is determined by its effect on the birth-rate, quan- 
titatively and qualitatively. 

But the curious thing about recent wars is that the vic- 
torious nations have commonly failed to reap any biolog- 
ical benefits. They have not utilized victory so as to 
enhance their birth-rate. Formerly peoples, like the 



SHAtL EAST WED WEST? 501 

Children of Israel, secured through extermination of their 
enemies a real biological advantage. Where native pop- 
ulations have been pushed aside by the invading white 
man, victory has meant racial expansion. But the bril- 
liant victories of Napoleon in the nineteenth century, 
which brought to France much power and prestige, 
merely depleted her stock and drained her of her best 
blood. And had she been victorious in the Franco-Prus- 
sian War, there is no reason to believe that she would 
have increased much in population, because her birth- 
rate had been falling since nearly the beginning of the 
nineteenth century. On the other hand, Austria has 
been defeated in almost every war in which she has en- 
gaged, but has steadily increased in population and in 
military power, while her old-time victorious rival has 
relatively lost ground. 

And to take another illustration, the Poles, who have 
suffered successive defeats and loss of territory until the 
final complete partition of their country among their 
enemies have kept up a rapid birth-rate, which has 
proved a sore trial to their conquerors. Defeat caused 
the extinction of Poland as a nation, — it may do so 
again, — but it has not greatly diminished the number of 
Poles or their rate of multiplication. Likewise, we find 
that defeat, exile, and oppression has failed to extin- 
guish the Jew, who has cherished the traditions of a 
high birth-rate and tribal integrity from remote an- 
tiquity. 

It is often the defeated people ivho win the biological 
victory lOr the real victory in the struggle for existence. 
It is often the victorious who go down to defeat and de- 
cadence. From the point of view of biology there is no 



502 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

sense in defeating a nation and then allowing it to out- 
hreed its victors. 

All this has a vital bearing on the meeting of Orient- 
als and Occidentals. It is to be hoped that this encoun- 
ter of the races may alwaj^s be friendly. But contacts 
are bound to become more numerous and intimate as the 
years go on, and we should not fail to consider the pos- 
sible, if not probable, occurrence of armed conflict in the 
not distant future. The tendency of both peoples to ex- 
pand will present in various forms many difficult situ- 
ations that may lead to war. And in any war growing 
out of this primitive elemental provocation to conflict 
it woidd he folly for the victorious people to allow the 
real biological victory to slip through their fingers. 
What history teaches of the wisdom of diplomatists who 
adjust terms of peace does not afford much assurance 
that they might not commit this very blunder. 

But, war or no war, the white and 3^ellow races repre- 
sent two expanding bodies which are competing for terri- 
tory. War or no war, supremacy belongs to the race 
that produces the larger number of babies that grow up. 
Peaceful penetration may be just as effective as armed 
invasion, if not more so. War is just an incident to real 
victory, which is often not taken advantage of. 

So long as the two races are in contact and maintain 
themselves without blending, they are bound to engage 
in the struggle for supremacy. This may lead to con- 
flict in the military sense or not. The struggle for ex- 
istence is inevitable. W^ar is only one kind of struggle. 
It may be avoided, but this will not alter in the least the 
fact that the Darwinian struggle for existence will con- 
tinue, and that, as a consequence of this struggle, one 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 503 

group will tend to prevail over the other. The meeting 
of Oriental and Occidental means competitive struggle 
in one form or another. It may be entirely peaceful and 
accompanied by all the amenities and suavity of the most 
refined social contacts ; but the struggle for existence and 
the process of selection will go ruthlessly on just the 
same. 

The term ''struggle for existence" is too frequently in- 
terpreted as implying conflict. Most organisms do not 
actually and literally struggle with one another, al- 
though they may be engaged in keen competition. 
Plants growing peacefully side by side are active com- 
petitors for food and water and place in which to grow, 
and it is very common to find one kind of plant com- 
pletely supplanting another species in a given locality. 
So it may also be with man. Kaces tend to expand, and 
where they come into contact there is bound to be compe- 
tition. There will be a yellow peril to the white race and 
a white peril to the yellow race wherever contacts occur. 

As before stated, a prime factor in the biological for- 
tunes of a race is its birth-rate. It will be instructive, 
therefore, to consider some features of our own birth- 
rate and the changes that have occurred in it in recent 
years. The first fact that calls for notice in this connec- 
tion is the fall of the birth-rate which has been going 
on in the most civilized white countries for the last few 
decades. This fall began early in France and in the 
United States, but it apparently did not affect England, 
Germany, and other northern European countries until 
about 1876, and southern European countries until a 
rather later period. In all European countries the 
death-rate has also fallen during this period, and in some 



504 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

cases more rapidly than the birth-rate, so that the actual 
rate of increase has become more rapid than before. 
Since, however, the death-rate in the healthier countries 
cannot be expected to become reduced greatly below its 
present figure, a further decline in the birth-rate must 
inevitably check the natural rate of increase. In Ger- 
many the birth-rate has declined more in the decade 
between 1900 and 1910 than in the preceding thirty 
years. The fall everywhere has been more rapid in 
cities than in rural districts, and is in general lowest in 
the largest cities. Paris and other French towns have 
for long failed to reproduce themselves, and Berlin by 
1910 virtually reached the same condition. 

The latter part of the nineteenth century has seen an 
enormous relative growth of city populations, and in 
France, Ireland, and many parts of England the rural 
population has actually fallen off, while the larger cities 
were rapidly increasing in size. In most countries the 
rural population has increased much more slowly than the 
urban. Labor-saving machinery on farms has removed 
the necessity for many farm laborers. The development 
of industries in the cities has created means of livelihood 
for the increasing numbers of the population, and cities 
have drawn especially those who are in the ages fitted 
for industrial employments. The present indications are 
that in the future increments of population will largely 
go to swell the ranks of urban inhabitants. Cities have 
always been destroyers of men, and the great industrial 
development of which urban growth is mainly the out- 
come has doubtless been racially injurious, whatever 
may have been its contributions to the development of 
civilization. City life has generally meant great mor- 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 505 

tality, shorter life, reduced fecundity, increased drunken- 
ness, vice, crime, and disease, especially venereal diseases, 
high infant mortality, and a general deterioration of the 
physique of urban inhabitants. 

Cities also tend to exaggerate the evils of differential 
fecundity, which have been perhaps the worst features 
of the decline of the birth-rate. They tend with especial 
rapidity to eliminate those stocks which have won suc- 
cess financially, socially, or in the field of intellectual 
endeavor. As cities become larger, as they will, the 
general birth-rate will tend to fall, and the relative ster- 
ilization of stocks which carry our best inheritance will 
probably increase. 

The worst feature of the decline of our birth-rate 
is the fact that those who forge to the front in any 
social, economic life leave the fewest offspring, while 
the improvident commonly produce large families. Not 
much over half of our college-bred women marry. Those 
who do, fail to produce enough children to maintain their 
stock. These studies have shown that the relatives of 
college women and others of the same social status have 
families not quite as large as the college women them- 
selves. The graduates of Har\^ard, Yale, and several 
other universities fail to reproduce themselves. Cattell 
has shown that American men of science fall far short of 
reproducing their stock, and the professional classes gen- 
erally exhibit the same failing. From successful busi- 
ness men and the professional classes birth restriction has 
passed on to the high-class artisans and skilled workers. 
The study of Miss Elderton of the declining birth-rate in 
the north of England proved that artificial limitations of 
birth through preventive measures and abortion was very 



506 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

extensively practised in the more intelligent, better-paid 
working classes, and that only those on the lowest level 
continued to produce large families. Studies at the Gal- 
ton Laboratory have shown that low wages, ignorance, 
irregularity of employment, and high fecundity have a 
high positive correlation. Among the more intelligent 
laboring population birth restriction is rapidly becoming 
a settled custom. The general influence of socialism is 
distinctly toward reduction of population. It is among 
socialists that new Malthusianism has received a warm, 
if not an enthusiastic reception. We find N. i\I. societies 
springing up, with their various journals, in England, 
Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, and in 
the United States, most of any large cities having their 
organizations for spreading the gospel of birth-control. 
There is no stopping this movement. As industry de- 
velops, and as education becomes diffused throughout the 
masses, it is bound to go on. We may regret that birth- 
control is exercised by those whose progeny we can least 
afford to lose, and that it is practised the least by those 
who should use it the most. But as matters now stand, 
birth-control not only reduces the quantity of our popu- 
lation, but it deteriorates the quality. 

Sooner or later the world will have to check the growth 
of its population. If we do not take the matter in hand 
ourselves, nature will do it for us through war, pesti- 
lence, famine, or all combined, and the former method 
is certainly the less disagreeable. Personally, I believe 
we shall witness a further decline in the birth-rate in 
the next few decades. France has virtually ceased to 
increase. The Americans that go back more than two 
generations have either ceased to increase or will prob- 



SHALL EAST WED WEST? 507 

ably soon do so. The rapid development of industrial- 
ism, the increasing pressure of population, the diffusion 
of knowledge, the elevation of standards of living, the 
diminishing hold of religious dogmas, and the spreading 
custom of birth-control will all conspire to bring about a 
rapidly diminishing growth of population throughout 
our Western world, and also for some time at least a 
deterioration of its quality. That, in truth, is our situ- 
ation in regard to the birth-rate. 

In the Oriental world w^e have in China an exceed- 
ingly high birth-rate, which has been coimterbalanced 
by a remarkably high death-rate, especially in infancy. 
But it is not to be expected that when the standard of 
education comes to be raised in China this murderous 
infant death-rate will be suffered to continue. The por- 
tentously high birth-rate of Japan is in a measure 
checked by a high infant mortality'-, but Japan has now 
a surplus of some 700,000 births over deaths. It is not 
to be supposed that a nation which in its w^ar with Russia 
applied the principles of hygiene and sanitation with an 
ett'ectiveness never approached by any Western power 
will long tolerate her present high infant death-rate. 
This enterprising nation will be quick to put into prac- 
tice the methods of saving infant life which have been 
carried out in Europe and the United States in the last 
ten years with signal success. Japan wants population. 
She wants colonies into which to expand. Her people in 
Hawaii, Korea and the Philippines retain their solidarity, 
intermarry little with other races and rapidly develop 
population that remains Japanese in spirit and in loyalty 
to the empire. There is little doubt that with the Japa- 
nese the encouragement of a high birth-rate is a na- 



508 MUST WE FIGHT JAPAN? 

tional policy. And if at present the net fecundity of 
the Japanese is below that of the white race, the indica- 
tions are that with the reduced death-rate which a people 
so efficient, patriotic, and far-seeing as the Japanese may 
be relied upon to effect, the natural rate of increase of 
population will probably exceed that of their white com- 
petitors. 

It may be that industrial development, improved stand- 
ards of living, socialism, birth-control, and infection by 
the essential irreligion of the Western world may come 
to check the natural increase of the Japanese people and 
eventually the other Asiatics, but these forces, which are 
already producing some effect, have to work against a 
deeply ingrained loyalty to family and to country and a 
clearly defined national policy of expansion. And be- 
fore nations arrive, if they ever will, at that stage in 
which they limit their population to the point at which 
they will no longer be tempted to make aggressions upon 
their neighbors there will probably arise many perplex- 
ing problems of adjustment between the Japanese and 
Occidentals in various parts of the world. 

The advancement of medicine and hygiene can scarcely 
fail to increase the net fecundity of the Orient. That 
will mean expansion through immigration or armed 
invasion. 

Nothing will aggravate the yellow peril so much as 
the sanitation of Asia. If that comes, carried out in a 
thorough and effective way, it will inevitably lead to 
very important developments. What course they may 
take, no one can say. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

Comparison of American Family Budgets with 
Japanese 

Budget No. 1 

This budget represents the result of a study made by 
the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics to deter- 
mine the cost of maintaining the family of a government 
employee in Washington at a level of health and decency. 
No provision is made in this budget for savings other 
than the original cost of household furniture and equip- 
ment which would average about $1,000 in value. This 
represents a saving of about 121/2 % of the yearly salary 
since the time of marriage. The family considered in 
this budget is a husband, wife, a boy of eleven, a girl of 
1a\e, and a boy of two years. 

Budget No. 2 

This budget is the result of a study by the National 
Industrial Conference Board to establish a minimum 
existence budf?:et for a family of five in industrial centers. 
Special attention is called to this budget, as any budget 
less than this standard does not cover what may be con- 
sidered a mere existence level. 

Budget No. 3 

This budget represents the result of the estimated ex- 
penditure of 60 farm laborers' families in the fruit 
growing sections of New Jersey. These families were 

511 



512 APPENDIX 

selected, because there was no other source of income 
worthy of consideration except the earnings of the hus- 
band. The house was furnished by the fanner, together 
with food and fuel estimated at $140. The result showed 
that the average number of children for these families 
was three, giving a family of five, which allowed for 
actual comparison with the other budgets submitted. 

Budget No. 4 

This budget represents the actual distribution of in- 
come for families in 92 industrial centers having £in 
income of less than $900 a year. This budget does not 
in any way meet actual needs and provides merely 
enough to cover mere existence costs for the lowest class 
of American industrial workers. 

Budget No. 5 

This represents the budget of a Japanese working- 
man's family in Tokio. All items of expenditure except 
those shown have been included under miscellaneous. 

The following survey taken from '' Millard's Review" 
gives us a further insight into Japanese budgets. 

"The results of a considerable rise in the cost of living, with 
which the rise in the incomes of people in general did not keep 
pace, has brought developments emphasizing the fact that the 
millions of Japanese workers are away at the other end of the 
ladder of good fortune. Even the average middle class family 
in Japan is said to re.ceive only $25 to $50 per month in in- 
come, and the laborer gets only 50 to 75 cents a day. In Osaka, 
a municipal statistics bureau has recently made a number of 
investigations of living costs, etc., and its figures show the fol- 
lowing comparative rise in costs since July, 1914. Taking the 
cost then as 100, the averages in June, 1919, were : 



JAPANESE FAMILY BUDGET COMPARED 

WITH ESTIMATED AND ACTUAL BUDGETS 

OF AMERICAN FAMILIES. 



2262 




I38S 




I080 



Miscell. 


1 1 


Fuel 


1 III 






Housing 
Clothing 
Food 


^^^ 


UJ 



843 




336 




514 APPENDIX 

"Food, 215; cotton goods, 376; fuel, 224; rent, 122; average 
of foregoing, 209; wages, 189. 

"And there has been a large increase during the past six 
months in the cost of living. The rise in Osaka for November, 
1918, to November, 1919, was over 60 per cent." 

A Washington Clerk's Standard of Living 

Here are the elements which enter into a budget of a 
Government clerk in Washington, who is married and has 
three children. The items represent in each case an av- 
erage struck from the budget of 280 families : 

The number of calories needed by a man at moderately hard 
muscular work is 3,500 per day. A family usually wastes 
about 10% of the caloric value of food in preparation, cook- 
ing, etc., and also a small per cent of the food which enters 
the mouth is not digested or assimilated. Therefore, 3,500 
calories purchased means approximately 3,100 to 3,200 calories 
actually consumed by the body. The standard of 3,500 calories 
for a man at moderately hard muscular work is about right. 
The following food budget has been drawn up on the basis of a 
family of five — husband, wife, and three children, boy, 11 ; girl, 
5; and boy 2; According to the standard established by the 
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, taking the caloric re- 
quirement of a man as 1.0, that of a woman is 0.9; a boy of 
11, 0.9; a girl of 5, 0.4; and a boy of 2, 0.15, making a com- 
bined food requirement about equal to that of 3.35 adults. 

Following is a comparison of the food allowance of this 
budget with the minimum standards generally accepted by 
scientific students of the subject: 

Ounces op food consumed per man per day 

Dairy 

Prod- Veee- 

Meat Fish ucts Milk Cereals tables Fruits Fats Sugar 
Average 
of 280 

families. 5.6 0.9 15.5 12.1 15.1 17.6 5.8 2.1 2.7 

tandard 4 or 5 2 16 11 or 12 12 16 or 20 16 or 20 2 2 



APPENDIX 515 

The average dietary has its obvious defects, and is 
not recommended as ideal. For instance, it is highly de- 
sirable, from both an economical and a dietary standpoint, 
for a family to secure its protein from the use of eggs and eat 
less meat than the quantity used in the average budget. As 
here presented, the food budget which has been arrived at is 
based on what the experience of a large number of families 
in various sections of the country shows to be a practical mini- 
mum for the maintenance of health. 

Theoretically, the level of health and decency in clothing has 
been interpreted as a level which takes into account not only 
the physical needs of warmth, cleanliness, and comfort, but 
which also has such regard for appearance and style, as will 
permit the family members to appear in public and within 
their necessarily rather narrow social circle with neatness and 
self-respect. But an effort has been made to allow only those 
quantities of clothing consistent with the minimum require- 
ment for health and decency. The clothing budget has been 
cut down to what amounts to almost a subsistence budget. In 
the case of the wife it would be highly desirable from the point 
of view of comfort and of the standard expected of the wife 
of a Government employee that she be allowed at least $50.00 
per year more on her clothing budget. She has been allowed 
only one afternoon dress of wool to last two years, and she has 
been allowed no dress petticoat to wear with it. It would be 
much more satisfactory if she were allowed one jersey-silk 
petticoat a year. It is questionable if the georgette waist al- 
lowed every other year can be made to last two years even 
with the most careful laundering, and this is her only fancy 
blouse. The same is true of the two cotton house dresses al- 
lowed. She is allowed no furs, and the suit allowed is of 
rather light weight, so that for the sake of her own health it 
would be much better if she could afford to buy a better coat 
for winter wear. She has been allowed one wool dress every 
two years for afternoon or evening wear. 



516 APPENDIX 

Only two night dresses a year have been allowed and these 
will be insufficient if she has any illness during the year. A 
winter hat has been allowed only every other year and no 
allowance has been made for retrimming. Without retrim- 
ming, it will be out of style by the second year which is de- 
moralizing to a woman's self-respect. It would be highly de- 
sirable from the standpoint of comfort and probably of 
economy, if she were allowed two pairs of silk stockings each 
year. The shoes allowed are heavy walking shoes. It would 
be well if she were allowed one pair of dress shoes at least 
every other year. The $5.00 allowance for miscellaneous items 
is very small when the simplest collar and cuff set is at least a 
dollar, when hair nets that last only a few days are 12% cents 
each, and when all other miscellaneous items have doubled in 
price. 

Annual cost of rent, fuel and light $428.00 

Housing standard: The minimum housing standard for a 
family of five has been taken as one of four rooms with 
bath and running water. The possession of a bath and run- 
ning water is necessary to health and cleanliness. The pos- 
session of four rooms is absolutely necessary to a family of 
five to prevent extreme overcrowding, and is, of course, the 
minimum. It would mean a kitchen, a combined living and 
dining room and two bedrooms, with the necessity in many 
cases of the combined living and dining room being used as 
a sleeping room. 

Upkeep of house furniture and furnishings $70.00 

This budget takes for granted that the prudent man and 
woman have attended to securing their furniture before they 
have the burden of a large family; and therefore that ex- 
pense need not be considered in attempting to fix a living 
budget for a family when it is at its period of maximum ex- 
pense. However, the upkeep of house furnishings such as 
bedding, linens, etc., is a necessary recurrent expense. 6% 
of the total value of the furniture has been allowed for this 



APPENDIX 517 

item. A special investigation by agents of the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics determined that the minimum amounts of 
furnishings necessary for a house of this size cost $1,083. 
Even if some second-hand furniture were bought, this total 
could not well be reduced below $1,000. For annual upkeep 
6% of this amount or $60 would be necessary. About ten 
or eleven dollars is required for curtains, electric light bulbs, 
etc. 
Laundry work, assistance with washing 1 day per week $104.00 
The wife is presumed to do the cooking for the family, to 
do the cleaning of the house, to make most of the simpler 
garments worn by herself and the children, to keep all 
clothes in repair, to care for the children, and to do the 
marketing. It would be unreasonable to expect that she 
should do the laundry work unassisted, so this budget has al- 
lowed for the assistance of one person for one day each week 
and $2.00 is about the prevailing rate in Washington for 
this kind of service. 

Cleaning supplies and services $32.92 

These include toilet soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, combs, 
hairbrushes, shoe polish, barber's services: husband's hair- 
cut, children's haircut, household: laundry soap, ^2 pound 
bar, starch, unspecified cleaning supplies and services, such 
as borax, ammonia, washing powder, bluing, insect powder, 
etc. 

Health $80.00 

Some allowance must of course be made for the mainte- 
nance of health. This expenditure includes physician, 
dentist, oculist, glasses, and drugs, both prescriptions and 
prepared remedies. 

No definite number of visits to the doctor can be assumed 
as necessary, but aside from the occurrence of major ill- 
nesses, colds and the various diseases of childhood will doubt- 
less make a doctor's services necessary at some time during 
the year. 



518 APPENDIX 

At least one visit to the dentist during the year for three 
members of the family will be necessary, and rarely does one 
visit prove sufficient. 

A special investigation of the expenditures of 64 families 
during the year ending July 31, 1919, shows the average ex- 
penditures for doctor, dentist, oculist, and other items neces- 
sary for the maintenance of health to have been $90.37. 
Insurance: (a) Life, $5,000 ordinary policy, yearly 

premium $110.00 

The male head of a family should carry insurance on his 
life to protect his wife and children. In order to do this it 
is necessary that his yearly income be sufficient to meet the 
yearly insurance premiums. The only question would seem 
to be as to the amount of insurance which should be carried. 
It would seem that a $5,000 policy would be the minimum 
for protection and safety. In the event of the husband's 
death this would assure an income to the wife and children 
of not over $300 per year, or $6 per week. 
Insurance: (b) Furniture $1.50 

Furniture insurance is a cheap form of insurance which it 
is highly important that every family should carry, as the 
loss of household equipment is an extremely serious matter 
to a family of low means. Inquiry made of the Underwrit- 
ers' Association of the District of Columbia shows that the 
annual premium of $100 worth of furniture (in a brick 
house) is 15 cents per year when paid for a period of five 
years. Insurance on $1,000 worth of furniture, which would 
be about the average value of furniture of the type of fam- 
ily had in mind in this study, would be $1.50. 
Car fare, 900 rides $45.00 

There are many Government employees in Washington 
who live so near their offices that car fare is an expense that 
need rarely be incurred. On the other hand, the large area 
covered by the city and its suburbs makes it absolutely nec- 
essary for a considerable portion of the employees to ride to 



APPENDIX 519 

and from their work, and for another portion of the em- 
ployees to ride at least a part of the time. In view of this 
it seems reasonable to allow the husband two car rides per 
day for each working day, or 600 rides in total. 

Approximately three trips per week on the street car have 
been allowed for the wife and children. Local open markets 
within easy walking distance are available to comparatively 
few families in Washington, and many who walk one way 
must take a car home after the market basket has been 
filled. In addition to this, the mother of three children will 
need to make occasional trips to the stores in the central 
part of the city to purchase clothing for the family, and it 
will be necessary usually for her to take with her the 2- and 
5-year-old children, involving two car fares. It is assumed 
that the children will be able to walk to and from school. 

Amusements and recreation $20.00 

The importance of recreation as a factor in healthy living 
need not, of course, be emphasized. It is accepted as an 
everyday fact. The only question is as to the character and 
cost of such recreation. Much wholesome amusement arises, 
naturally, within the circle of the family and its friends and 
costs nothing. On the other hand the complexity of modern 
life in the city places a money price on many simple and 
desirable forms of amusements. Thus a picnic for a family, 
or a visit to the park, involves a considerable item of car 
fare, while a trip on the river will cost a dollar or more. 
Moreover, occasional visits to the moving pictures are to 
be expected of at least some members of a family. Thus, 
even though the more expensive forms of amusement and 
recreation, such as summer vacations, are eliminated, some 
expenditures for this item are absolutely necessary if a 
family is not to lead a completely isolated life. 

It is impossible, however, to establish quantity standards 
for amusements and recreations. The most reasonable 
method would, therefore, seem to be to use as a guide the 



520 APPENDIX 

average amount expended by families of Government em- 
ployees. A special investigation of expenditures of 64 
families of Government employees in Washington sliows 
that their average expenditures for amusements and recre- 
ation during the year ending July 31, 1919, amounted ap- 
proximately to $20. On the average these families had 
expended a similar amount on vacations, but no allowance 
for vacation has been made on this budget. 
Newspapers 1 daily newspaper, $8.40 

A newspaper, daily and Sunday issues, is placed in the 
budget because it is desirable that every citizen should read 
a daily paper. In addition, the modern newsj^aper offers a 
variety of literary and educational features at a minimum 
expense. 

No allowance is made for magazines or books, not because 
the reading thereof is not desirable, but because a family, 
forced to careful economy, may avail itself of the public 
libraries for all forms of literature. 

The yearly subscription rates of the Washington news- 
papers vary slightly, with $8.40 as the minimum. It is felt 
that the maximum should be allowed in order to permit the 
reader his choice of newspapers. 

Organizations, such as the church and labor unions, play 
such an important part in life that some expenditure on 
this account must be regarded as essential. Expenditures 
for this purpose are accepted as necessary for the majority 
of families only in the case of the church and labor organi- 
zations; membership in other organizations, such as the Red 
Cross Society, the Y. M. C. A., and social clubs may be very 
desirable, but cannot be regarded as necessary for a family 
with a low income, 
(a) Church and other religious organizations $13.00 

Membership in, or regular attendance at church almost 
compels contributions in one form or another. Not to be 
able to contribute usually makes the individual feel so "un- 



APPENDIX 521 

comfortable" that he feels unwilling to attend. Just what 
the minimum contribution should be is difficult to determine. 
In any case, a family contribution of 25 cents a week would 
seem to be a bare minimum. 

(b) Labor organizations $10.00 

Membership in a labor organization always involves con- 
tributions. The amount of these varies. The craft unions 
to which many employees in the navy yard and other me- 
chanical divisions belong have higher dues than the clerical 
workers' organizations. The most reasonable method of ar- 
riving at a minimum allowance for this purpose would be 
to use as a guide the average amount actually paid for labor 
organization dues by Government employees. The average 
for 64 families of Government employees in Washington 
during the past year was $10.08 each. 

Incidentals $52.00 

Many other items, mostly small or occasional, cannot be 
entirely avoided by a family — such, for instance, as moving 
expenses, burial expenses, stationery and postage, telephon- 
ing or telegraphing at times, patriotic contributions, and 
charity. Also a few minor comforts — such, perhaps, as to- 
bacco — are almost in the category of necessities for certain 
people. No minimum quantities for these items can pos- 
sibly be specified. The only solution is to grant a modest 
sum of money as a maximum. 

The amount granted by this budget is $1 per week. 

Mr. Lauck found that the cost of supporting a family 
of five on this level of existence in Washington was 
$2,533.97 in IMay, 1920. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, 
it ran only to $1,790.68. 

The following estimates on population were made by 
the United States Bureau of Education in June, 1919. 

Estimated population of the Hawaiian territory, June 
30, 1919 : 



522 

Nationality 



APPENDIX 



Total Percentage 
of total 

Asiatics 159,900 60.6 

Japanese 110,000 41.7 

Chinese 22,800 8.6 

Koreans 5,100 1.9 

Filipinos 22,000 8.4 

Polynesians 39,260 14.8 

Hawaiians 22,600 8.6 

Caucasian-Hawaiians 10,760 2.2 

Asiatic-Hawaiians 5,900 4.0 

Latins 32,800 12.4 

Portuj^ese 25,000 9.5 

Spanish 2,400 .9 

Porto Rieans 5,400 2.0 

Americans, British, Germans 1,000 11.8 

Russians, etc. 

Miscellaneous 706 .4 

263,666 100. 



Estimated Electorate in 1930 and 1940. Territory 





OF 


Hawaii. 








Electorate 
in 1918 


Estimated 
additions 
1918-1920 


Estimated 
total elec- 
torate— 1930 


Estimated 

additions 

1930-1940 


Electorate ex- 










clusive of 










Japanese . . 


19,837 


8,220 


25,057 


6,850 


Japanese com- 










ing of age 










less thirteen 










per cent for 










deaths and 










removals . . 


237 


10,628 


10,915 


19,942 




20,124 


18,848 


38,972 


26,792 



APPENDIX 



523 



The following table of occupations shows an interest- 
ing variety of work being done by Japanese in Cali- 
fornia. The figures have been compiled by the Japanese 
Association of America. 



Southern California 

Professional 347 

Merchants 1,397 

Farmers 3,199 

Nursery 280 

Dairy 61 

Fishery 543 

Miscellaneous 1,128 

Clerks 713 

Farm Laborers 3,639 

Fishermen 724 

Other workmen. 

Indoors 1,065 

Outdoor 1,432 

In and outdoor . . 991 

Students 303 

Women 6,507 

Children 

American born 7,139 

Japanese Born 960 



Northern California 

Commercial 

Employers 3,307 

Employees 793 

Domestic Labor 1,022 

Agricultural 

Employers 4,696 

Employees 10,605 



20,423 



Women 9,032 

Minors under 17 years 11,092 
Others 2,849 



43,396 
Subsequent correc- 
tions, corrections, 

not stated 4,704 

Southern California 30,528 



30,528 



Total . . 78,628 



Estimates of Future Janpanese Population in 
California 

We have asked Mr. Thompson to compute the probable 
growth of the Japanese colonies in California for the 
next forty years on the basis of three different assump- 



524 APPENDIX 

tions. We present his interesting tables below. The 
first one assumes that Japanese immigration is checked 
immediately, so that the future increase will come wholly 
from Japanese already in the State. The second table 
assumes that Japanese continue to enter at the same rate 
as for the last ten years, and the third table assumes the 
influx to bear the same ratio to the total Japanese popu- 
lation of the State as it has during the last decade. In 
each table Mr. Thompson accepts the estimates of the 
State Board of Control as his point of departure. 

It is interesting to compare Mr. Thompson's findings 
with the wild forecasts of sundry journalistic prophets 
on the Pacific coast, some of whom see millions of Jap- 
anese swarming from vale to mountain-top, from Canada 
to Mexico, in another thirty years or so. 

Table I 

Estimate of the Japanese population in California by de- 
cades 1920-60 on the supposition that Japanese immigration is 
excluded henceforth. 

Probable natural in- Probable popu- 

crease of population lation at given 
during decade date 

ending 

Jan. 1, 1920 87,279 

Jan. 1, 1930 117,279 

Jan. 1, 1940 152,279 

Jan. 1, 1950 190,279 

Jan. 1, 1960 228,279 

1. The excess of births over deaths for the decade 
1920-30 is based upon an estimate of thirty-five per cent 
increase from this source ; for the decade 1930-40, thirty 
per cent for the decade 1940-50, twenty-five per cent 
for the decade 1950-60, twenty per cent. I believe that 



APPENDIX 525 

Table II 
Estimate of the Japanese population in California by de- 
cades for the period 1920-60 on the supposition that the num- 
ber of Japanese immigrants entering California is the same 
for each decade as during the decade 1910-20. 

Increase of popu- 

Probable ^^!i«''.5''-^r^f Probable natural in- 

population ^^.tfj^r. ^ll crease of population 

ending 

Jan. 1, 1920.... 20,331 25,592 87,279 

Jan. 1, 1930.... 30,000 25,592 142,871 

Jan. 1, 1940. . . .43,000 25,592 211,463 

Jan. 1, 1950. . . .53,000 25,592 290,055 

Jan. 1, 1960. . . .58,000 25,592 372,647 
1. The rate of natural increase used in this table is the same 
as that used in table 1. 

Table III 
Estimate of the Japanese population in California by de- 
cades for the period 1920-60 on the supposition that the num- 
ber of immigrants entering California during each of these de- 
cades bears the same ratio to the total Japanese population in 
California at the beginning- of each decade as it did during the 
decade 1910-20. 

Increase of popu- 

Probable natural in- ^fiToHmmf P^«^^^l« 

crease of population cr■rnt■,r^■n r.vf.r population 

dul-inir decade ^JJnlS-" tiou' ^YZ'"" 

«^'^i^« during decade ^^^^e 

ending 

Jan. 1, 1920 20,331 25,592 87,279 

Jan. 1, 1930 30,000 54,000 171,279 

Jan. 1, 1940 51,000 106,000 328,279 

Jan. 1, 1950 82,000 203,000 613,279 

Jan. 1, 1960. . . .123,000 380,000 1,116,279 

1. In this table the same percentages for rate of natural 

increase are used as in tables 1 and 2. 



526 APPENDIX 

these estimates are not excessive, because the Japanese 
population in California is at present largely made up 
of men and women in the early years of the child-bearing 
period, and as a result the rate of natural increase by 
excess of births over deaths will be very high until the 
age grouping becomes more normal. 

Comparative Costs of Military Maintenance 

The following official figures taken from the Japan 
Year Book for 1919-20 show the detailed cost of main- 
taining Japanese soldiers. In reading them, bear al- 
ways in mind that 1 yen is nominally fifty cents Ameri- 
can, but at present has something like double the pur- 
chasing power of our money in Japan. For roughly 
accurate comparisons, think of a yen as a dollar in terms 
of what it buys. 

Allowances to troops in Japan are allowed on contract plan 
as regards the 5 items of food, clothing, encampment-utensils, 
barrack necessities and horse allowances. The allowances are 
fixed as below: — 

Food. — 6 go (1 quart) of rice a day for a soldier, besides 
some money allowance for side-dishes. The money allowances 
differ according to districts where troops are stationed, rang- 
ing for regiments at home from 7.5 sen per diem to 11.4 sen 
(for Hokkaido), 12 to 15 sen for the Formosan garrisons, and 
24 sen for those in China and 18 sen for Korea and Saghalien. 

Clotliing. — From yen 27 to yen 34 a year for each foot 
soldier, yen 31 to 37 for Cavalry, yen 30 to 36 for Artillery, 
yen 28 to 34 for Engineering and yen 29 to 35 for Commis- 
sariats. 

Encampment utensils and barrack necessities. — There are 26 
grades ranging from the lowest of yen 4.64 a month for the 



APPENDIX 527 

utensils and yen 6.76 for the others to the maximum of over 
yen 138 and yen 106.58 respectively. 

Horse allowance. — Barley, hay and straw constitute fodder. 
Per head rates a day are 1 kwan of hay or straw, and from 
1.4 kwan of barley according to the services; 36 to 55 sen 
per month for hoofing and 25 sen a year for hair-cutting. 



This total allowance of approximately 11 yen in terms 
of American money equals about $5.50 a month for the 
average foot soldier, out of which he draws his salary 
and all his living and maintenance expenses. The Amer- 
ican soldier receives $30 a month straight salary. All his 
expenses are paid by the Government. The comparison 
is obvious, all but for one point. A yen is worth 50 
cents in American money, but in Japan its purchasing 
power is $1.00. 

The United States Army standard rations cost around 
40 cents, and include 27 articles: beef, bacon, hash, sal- 
mon, soup, bread, beans, rice, potatoes, jam, tomatoes, 
prunes, dried fruits, butter, and the usual cooking acces- 
sories. The Japanese ration is a quart of rice and 4 
cents, which means about 16 to 20 cents a day, even at 
the present abnormally high cost of rice. 

The meaning of these figures, as well as of the current 
military appropriations of Japan, depends entirely upon 
the kind of war to be waged. Thus, on the hypothesis 
of a war directed against the continental United States, 
Japan 's army and navy budget is ridiculously small. In 
fact, the size of it is proof enough that the Japanese 
Government is not entertaining even the possibility of 
offensive warfare against us. On the other hand, when 



528 APPENDIX 

construed as an outlay for a defensive war fought in Far 
Eastern waters, its effectiveness is anywhere from four 
to ten times that of the American budget, the latter being 
regarded now as one for a long-distance war. 

It is now plain how misleading many reassuring state- 
ments about Japan's intentions have been, notably those 
made by Eastern journals like the New York '* Times, '* 
which, in a recent editorial, declares that ''since Japan's 
proposed outlay on her military forces is moderate com- 
pared with ours, it must be evident that Japan is not 
trying to steal a march upon the United States by pre- 
paredness for war on a large scale." 



INDEX 



Acreage, tillable, in world, 302 

in America, 303 
Agrarian Crisis, 392 
in Australia, 476, etc. 
in California, 478, etc. 
in Denmark, 476 
in Europe, 476 
Agrarian reforms for U. S., 386, 

etc. 
America, Japanese illusions 

about, 47, etc. 
America, lack of interest in 

Japan, 43 
Americanization, Illusions 

about, 373 
Anglo-Polynesian hybrids, 492 
Armenians in California, preju- 
dices against, 251, etc. 
Army rations, cost of Ameri- 
can, 526 
cost of Japanese, 526 
"Asalii," editorial on press cen- 
sorship, 69, 70 
statement of on Japanese for- 
eign policy, 443 
on Japanese diplomacy in 
China, 443 
Asia, reconstruction of, 347 
Australia, Agrarian reform .'n, 

476, etc. 
Autocracy in Japan, 62, etc. 

Belgium, density of population, 

76 
Bellairs, Carlyon ; "rationing 

plan" of, 179, 180 
Birth control movement, 506 
Birth rate, in China, 507 

of Japanese in California, 

224 
future reductions of Japa- 
nese, 365 



and social forces, 331, etc. 
in world, 324, etc. 
decline of white, 503, etc. 
effect of cities on, 504, etc. 
and low standards of living, 

468 
Oriental and Occidental com- 
pared, 499, etc. 
Black race, future of, 338 
Bland, J. O. P., comments on, 

443 
Blockade of Japan, difficulties 

of, 144 
Boer War, significance of, 124, 

125 
Brisbane, Arthur, on America's 

food production, 290 
Buddhist Temples in U. S., 453 
Budgets of American and Japa- 
nese families, 512 
Bushido, fiction of, 65, 66 
Business practices of Japanese, 
112, etc. 

Capper, Senator Arthur, farm 

industry, 393 
Agrarian reform in, 478, etc. 
California, character of natives, 

241 
future Japanese population 

of, 524, etc. 
influence of climate, 261 
invasion of discredited, 153 
land-grabbing in, 242 
landlordism in, 242, etc. 
physical geography of, 217, 

etc. 
standard of living in, 259 
taxes on land holdings, 232, 

244 
traditions toward Japanese, 

40 



529 



530 



INDEX 



California {contiiuied) 
water supply of, 227 
work and occupations of 
Japanese in, 522 
Calif ornians, temperament of, 

254 
Chamberlain, B. H., on falsified 

Japanese history, 65, etc. 
Cheap labor, 463 
Chiba, Toyoji. on Japanese 
farmers' skill, 208, 209 
citizenship laws of, 431 
China, corruption in, 343, etc. 
development of, as aid to 

Japan, 170 
hopes of Japanese militarists 

in, 170 
infant mortality in, 328 
over-population of, 310 
as place of conflict between 

Japan and U- S., 73, etc. 
sanitation of, as factor in fu- 
ture wars, 74 
victory over Japan in League 
of Nations, 168 
Chinese, America's exclusion of, 

434 
Citizenship, 

Chinese law of, 431 
dual allegiance in, 438, etc. 
Japanese law of, 436 
Civilization, degrees of in Asia, 
Europe and America, 345, 
etc. 
as affected by climate, 348, 
etc. 
Clan power in Japan, 49, 444 
Climate and civilization, 348 
influence on Californians, 261 
Influence on Japanese in Cali- 
fornia, 264 
Constitution, Japanese ; On 
Army and Navy control, 62 
Colonization program for 

Japan, 384 
Continental power of Japan, 

123 
Co-operation of Japanese farm- 
ers, 220, 221 



Cotton, sources of Japan's sup- 
ply, 31, 32 

Crimes, American failures to 
control, 12, etc. 

Crisis, Japanese, its four imme- 
diate causes, 6, 7 
its three basic causes, 362 

Crookes, Sir William, on the 
consiunption of wheat, 281, 
282 

Culture, nature of, 235, etc. 

Darwin, Charles; on cross- 
breeding, 484, 485 

Davenport, on inbreeding, 487 

Deadlock, military, 161, etc. 

Democratic forces in Japan, 
weakness of, 48, etc. 

Denmark, Agrarian reforms in, 
476 

Diff'usion of buying habits, 278 

Digby, on famines in India, 
326 

Disarmament, 382 

Draft animals and world food 
supply, 296, 297 

Durham settlement, 478, 479 

East, E. M., on corn breeding, 
485 
on future food production, 
304, etc. 
Education, how controlled in 

Japan, 66 
Embargoes as preventive of 

war, 178, etc. 
Emigration, failure of as per- 
manent relief for over-pop- 
ulation, 363, etc. 
and isotherms, 356, etc. 
Japanese and the Japanese 

crisis, 363 
of Japanese into Siberia, 358, 

etc. 
possible control of Asiatic, 

355, etc. 
to rural districts, 370, etc. 
Emigrants, Japan's political 
control over, 106, etc. 



INDEX 



631 



Emigrants ( continued ) 
Japanese, how watched by 
government, 441 
Endurance, biological laws of, 
131 
American law of, 429 
French law of, 430 
Expatriation, Japanese laws on, 
107, etc. 
Swiss case of, 429 
Extraterritoriality, modern 

practice of, 425 
Europe, Agrarian reforms in, 
476 

Family, its power in China, 

433 
Farm incomes in Japan, 81 
Farm products, prices of, 418, 

etc. 
Farm laborers, average ages of, 
397 
in California, 403, etc. 
Italian, living conditions of, 

414, etc. 
possibilities of advancement 

for, 396, etc. 
the tenant house, 398, etc. 
wages of, 403 
Farmers, Japanese in Califor- 
nia, 202, etc. 
cause of unrest, 399 
moves for "economic justice," 

417, etc. 
poverty of in Japan, 78 
skill of Japanese in Califor- 
nia, 208, etc. 
why they leave home, 395, etc. 
and the "Yellow Peril" in 
California, 205, etc. 
Farms, acreage handled by 
Americans, 306 
size of in Japan, 77 
Feudalism in wartime, 129 
Finns, on New York farms, 469 
Financial situation as force for 

peace, 25 
Fisheries in California, Japa- 
nese, 212 



Fletcher, Admiral, on Japan's 

strategic position, 137 
Food control in United States, 

results of, 282, etc. 
Food and farm problem, of 

America, 377 
of Japan, 376 
Foreign investments and the 

"open door," 164, etc. 
Foreign traders' opinions about 

Japan, 41, 42 
Formosa, colonization of, 75 

Geddes, Ambassador Auckland, 

on social unrest, 402 
Genro, position of, 56, etc., 457, 

etc. 
"Gentlemen's Agreement," futil- 
ity of, 362 
how interfered with, 458 
secrecy in revising, 157 
Germany, American relations 
with in 1910, 4, etc. 
Japanese parallels, 55, etc. 
Go-no, power of in Japanese 

politics, 49 
Government, irresponsibility of 
in Japan, 57, etc. 
form of in Japan, 55, etc. 

Habits, difficulty of breaking, 
236, etc. 
diffusion of living, 278 
of judging Japan, 38 
Hara, Premier, suffrage reforms 

of, 96 
Harding, W. G., on big navy, 17 
Hawaii, Buddhism in, 195 
character of Japanese in, 190, 

etc. 
electorate of, 524 
increase of garrison in, 17 
Japanese in, 185, etc. 
Japanese judgment on annex- 
ation, 18 
loyalty of Japanese in, 196, 

197 
a parallel of Heligoland, 185, 
etc. 



532 



INDEX 



Hawaii (continued) 
school problems in, 193, etc. 
U. S. Commission of Educa- 
tion, survey of, 190, etc. 

Heligoland compared with 
Hawaii, 185, etc. 

Herero Rebellion, military sig- 
nificance of, 25, 126 

Hinman, G. W., on Wilson's 
Oriental policy, IGO 

History of Japan, how falsified 
by bureaucracy, G4, etc. 

"Hochi," attack on Anglo-Sax- 
ons, 449 
quotations from, 147 

Holmes, S. J., on intermarriage 
of races, 481, etc. 

Hoover, Herbert, on future 
wheat prices, 307, 308 

Housing condition of Japanese 
in California, 232, 233 

Hungary, competition of races 
in, 466 

Huntington, Ellsworth, on cli- 
mate and civilization, 348, 
etc. 

Ichihashi, Yamato, on Japanese 
farmers in California, 217, 
208 

Immigration, dilemma of, 368, 
etc. 
and standard of living, 274, 
etc. 

Imperial Edict, as basis of Jap- 
anese morals, 452 

Imperial Rescript on Educa- 
tion, 66 

Impregnability of Japan, 22, 
etc. 

Inbreeding, effects of, 486 

Industrialists of Japan, and 
peace, 33 

Industry in Japan, State own- 
ership of, 59, etc. 

Industry, and preventive 
checks on population, 334 

Infant mortality in China, 328 
in Japan, 328 



Interests, natural American, 
37, 38 

Intermarriage of races, down- 
ward selection in, 494, etc. 
theories about, 482 
in South America, 495 

International Farm Congress, 
its progress, 417 

Invasion of U. S., old delusions 
about, 126 

Ishii, Viscount; on disarma- 
ment, 18 

Ito, Marquis; his program, 446 

Japan, causes of irritation 

toward U. S., 18, etc. 
difficulties of understanding 

U. S., 51, 52 
economic expansion of, 88 
economic dependence on U. 

S., 30 
growth of population in, 330 
industrial depression in, 28 
industrial system, 23 
infant mortality in, 328 
law of citizenship in, 436 
Japanese, illusions about their 

adaptability, 46 
business practices of, 112, 

etc. 
cleanliness of, 231 
dislike of Continental cli- 
mate, 360 
eflFects of their habits on Cal- 

ifornians, 258 
impressions about America, 8, 

etc. 
loyalty of to Japan, 439, etc. 
maintenance cost of soldiers, 

525 
schools in U. S., 452 
societies in U. S., 451 
Japanese-American relations, 

three phases of future, 176 
Java, Japanese expansion in, 93 

Kato, Viscount ; condemnation 

of U. S., 21 
Kawakami, K. K. ; on anti- 



INDEX 



533 



Ka wakami ( continued ) 

liberalism in Europe and 
U. S., 16 
Kennedy, J. R.; and Japanese 

news agency, 68 
Kenseikai, members of, 50 
Kern County Land Company, 

holdings of, 242 
King, F, H., on Shantung farm- 
ers, 77 
Kokusai, Japan's news agency, 

68 
Korea, annexation of, 105 
as a Japanese colony, 105 
hopes of militarists in, 170 
Japanese improvements in, 

118, 119 
as a source of military sup- 
plies, 123 

Labor agitation in Japan, 98 

Labor unions in Japan, 98 

Land grabbing in California, 
242, etc. 

Landlordism in California, 242 
and Japanese in California, 
249 

Lane, D. F.; on skill of Jap- 
anese farmers, 210 
on Japanese cooperatives, 220, 
221 

Lauck, W. Jett; budget esti- 
mates by, 277, 513, etc. 

"Letters from a Japanese 
Patriot," 67, 87 

Levasseur, estimates on Eu- 
ropean population, 316 

Living expenses in Japan, 88 

Magyars, competition with Ru- 
manians, 465 

"Mainichi"; indictment of 
American policies, 18, etc. 

Malthus on population, 320, 
etc. 

Manchuria and Japanese col- 
onists, 75 
and war resources, 124 

Manila as army base, 143, 144 



Marshall Islands, value to 
Japan, 150 

Martin, C. E.; on Japanese ex- 
patriation laws, 107 

McClure, S. W. ; statement on 
wool crisis, 418 

Mead, Elwood; breakdown of 
agriculture, 393, etc. 
on farm crisis, 405, etc. 

Meredith, Secretary of Agricul- 
ture; on farm decline, 394 

Mexican border smuggling of 
Japanese, 200, etc. 

Micronesia, significance of Jap- 
anese mandates over, 150, 
151 

Middle-western farmer, methods 
of in California, 412 

Mikado, power of, 55, 56 

Militarism, antiquity of in 
Japan, 51 

Militarists in Japan, their in- 
tentions, 444, etc. 
their possible moves, 168, etc. 
their Pan-Asian program, 
447 

Millard's "Review"; attacks on 
Japan, 70 
report on Japanese labor 
unions, 98, 99 

Miller & Lux, land holdings of 
in California, 242, etc. 

"Millionaire farmer," methods 
of, 400, etc. 

Missionary traditions about 
Japan, 39 
work in Asia, early failures 
of, 238, 239 

Morphia, sale of by Japanese, 
90 

Motion pictures, effect of on 
Asiatics, 8, etc. 
inferior quality of in Asia, 9, 
19 



National Board of Farm Or- 
ganizations, its program, 
420 



534 



INDEX 



•'National honor," fiction of in 
Japan, 51 

National policy, assumptions 
underlying, 270, etc. 
basic questions of, 285, etc. 
of Japan, scientific planning 

of, 120 
necessity for, 2G9, etc. 
three procedures in, 367 

Natomas Land Company, hold- 
ings of, 243 

Naturalization of Asiatics, 40 1 

Naturalization and immigra- 
tion policies, 460 

Nav-y, American compared with 
the Japanese, 148, etc. 

Needs, American, 273, etc. 

New York State, changes in 
rural population, 469 

News, quality of, cabled to 
Japan, 11 

Newspapers, and handling of 
Japanese news, 256, etc, 

Nikolaievsk incident, 158, etc. 

Novicow, advocacy of race 
mingling, 490, 491 

Okuma, Marquis, organizes pro- 
test, 20, 21 

Opium, traffic in by Japanese, 
91 

uver-population, in Europe and 
China. 309, 310 
Japan's, 73, etc. 

Ozaki, Yukio, attack on Jap- 
anese oligarchy, 450, 451 



Pan-Asian movement, 447 
Pan-Pacific Consortium, 391 
Peace, four influences for, 23 
Pearl, Raymond; on American 

food habits, 284 
Perry, Commodore; purpose of 

opening up Japan, 18 
Philippines, independence of 

advocated, 382 
Poles, competition with Ger- 
mans, 466 



conquerors of Germany 
through birth-rate, 501 
Political parties, nature of in 
Japan, 50 
one-man rule of in Japan, 50 
Population, possible increase of 
in U. S., 366 
of China, 318 
distribution of in California, 

219 
density of in Japan, 76, etc. 
estimates of Japanese, 319 
future expansion of non-Eu- 
ropean, 333, etc. 
of India, 319 
of Japan, 73 
Japanese in California, 198, 

etc. 
Japanese as future cause of 

war, 174 
movement of to cities, 278, 

etc. 
perils of dense, 310, 311 
world; rate of growth of, 
298, etc. 
Press embargoes in Japan, 69, 

70 
Preventive checks on birth- 
rate, 332 
Productive area of Japan, 74, 

etc. 
Program of international read- 
justment, 381, etc. 
Prussia, her old Polish problem, 

466, etc. 
Public opinion, how controlled 
in Japan, 63, etc. 

Race prejudice, 497 

Raw materials, Japan's lack of, 
101, etc. 

Rehboter hybrids, 491 

Reinsch, Paul; on China pop- 
ulation, 310 

Rice crop and prices in Japan, 
82, 83 
growing in Japan, 77 

Rowell, Chester W. ; on racial 
intermarriage, 483 



INDEX 



5S5 



Rumanians, competition with 

Ma^ars, 4G5 
Rural life, heterogeneity of, 

371, etc. 
Russia and Asiatic emis^ration, 

356, 359 
as land of promise for Japan 

and Germany, 102 



Sakhalin, American protests 
concerning, 160 

San Francisco, opposition to 
methods of Japanese consul 
general, 190 

Sanitation in Asia, possible ef- 
fects of, 508 

Sato, Doctor, on Japanese ten- 
ant farmers, 78 

Sato, General, on Nikolaievsk, 
159 

Sato, Lieutenant-General, on 
American invasion of Ja- 
pan, 147, 148 

School teachers, wages and 
budget in Japan, 87 

Scientists, concentration of in 
service of state, 117, etc. 

Scott, Robertson, on Japanese 
farmers, 80. etc. 

Segregation of Japanese in Cal- 
ifornia, 213 

Seiyukai, numbers of, 50 

Shantung, density of popula- 
tion, 77 

Shima, George, statement by, 
204 

Shoin, Yoshida, 444 

Siberia, a dilemma for Japan, 
175 
hopes of Japanese militarists 
in, 171 

Silk industry in Japan, 30 

Sino-Japanese Agreement, 

American efforts toward 
violations of, 19 

Sleep habits of Japanese, 134, 
135 

Smith, J. Russell, assumptions 



as to standards of living, 
293, etc. 
on future of agriculture, 291 
on grains for fodder, 292, 
293 
Smuggling of Japanese from 

Mexico, 200, etc. 
Social forces and the birth 

rates, 331 
Social inertia in the United 

States, 34, etc. 
Socialism in Japan, 95 
Southern Pacific R. R., land 

holdings of, 242 
Sovereignty, conceptions of, 
424, etc. 
territorial, 426, etc. 
modern compromises in, 428 
Standard of living, immigra- 
tion and, 274 
as basis of national policy, 

281, etc. 
and Americanization, 274, etc. 
how affected by immigration, 

368, etc. 
in California, 259, etc. 
how misconstrued, 131 
problem of Japan, 379 
problem of America, 379, etc. 
low; military advantages of, 

130, etc. 
of Washington clerk, 513, etc. 
State Department, weaivness of, 

36 
Steel, Japan's deperdenee on 

U. S. for, 32 
Stephens, Governor, praise of 
Japanese in California, 229, 
230 
Stoddard, Lothrop, on "Crisis 
of the Ages," 341 
on growth of races, 312, 313 
errors in his population esti- 
mates, 314, 315 
Strategic position of Japan, 

126, etc. 
Strikes, in Japan, 98, etc. 
"Struggle for Existence," mis- 
interpretation of, 503 



536 



INDEX 



Submarines, value of in future 

wars, 151, 152 
Submarine Defense Association, 

report of, 151, 152 
Suffrage in Japan, 96 

Tai-ping Rebellion, deaths in, 
326 

Takagia, Prof.; on Japanese 
cost of living, 88 

Taxation in Japan, 100 

Temperament of Californians, 
254, etc. 

Textile industry in Japan, 31, 
etc. 

Thompson, W. S. ; on future of 
Japanese population in 
California, 226, 524, 525, 
526 
on world population, 298, 
316, etc. 

"Times," Los Angeles, on im- 
portation of coolies, 245 

"Times," New York, on Jap- 
anese army-navy budget, 
527 

Tokutomi, on Japanese imperi- 
ali-sm, 445 

Torrid zone, the inhabitants of, 
354 

Trade e'hics of Japan, 19, 112, 
etc. 

Transport, difficulties of, in 
war on Japan, 141, 142 

Treaty, provisions of Japanese- 
American, 454, etc. 

Tropics, obstacles in develop- 
ment of, 349, etc. 



Truck gardening by Japanese, 

211 
Unrest of Japanese masses, 98 

Wages of Japanese in Cali- 
fornia, 230, 231 
in Japan, 86, 100 
War, effects of Japan's popula- 
tion on, 174 
estimate of forces against 

Japan, 140, 141 
improbability of early, 24 
Japan's ignorance of injuries 

of, 27 
probable cost of, with Japan, 

145, 146 
lost benefits of, to races, 500, 
etc. 
Water supply of California, 227, 

etc. 
Wheat, future prices of, 307, 

308 
Wheatfield riots, 411 
White races, size of in world, 

310, 320 
Williams, E. T.; on national 

policies, 423, etc. 
"Winter sleep" in Russia, 132 
Work habits of Japanese, 134 
World war, effect on farm labor, 
394 

"Yorodzu," editorial attack on 
U. S., 21 
on Nikolaievsk affair, 159 

Zones, of high initiative, 352, 
etc. 
of low initiative, 352, ©tc. 



606 



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